NBA Should Investigate Tampering by Heat

[hpantazo]

are you kidding? Stern is loving this, he's fully morphed into Vince McMahon now.

Why would Stern like the Heat situation? Sure, it has resulted in a lot of headlines, but it will also result in lower attendance. Lebron and Wade both lead to sellouts and good TV ratings individually. Combining them is redundant.

Wouldn't Stern prefer Lebron in a market that needs a boost? Regardless, that isn't part of his job.

not necessarily. The media attention and tv ratings the heat will get and the finals ratings they will eventually get (not this year though) will far outweigh the loss of ticket sales from the cavs. The cavs are in a small market to begin with. Miami is a pretty good sized market. Losing some sales from the cavs won't hurt much in the overall picture, and toronto was doing poorly with bosh on the team so that doesn't make a difference. Amare went to NY, so they will get some sort of improvement, and the bulls are in great shape. Having this "super team" of evildoers in miami is going to be huge for NBA ratings and media attention for at least 5-6 years, defining an era like the jordan era bulls, but bigger.

[action781]

A hard cap doesn't really jive with guaranteed contracts.  Some teams would be at the cap going into the summer, then have to cut someone to sign their draft pick.  Many other teams wouldn't be able to make moves to add talent because of their salary committments.  Perhaps the trades that resulted would be really, really weird.  OTOH, perhaps the team that gets the best player might not "win" the trade, or that perhaps talented players could be traded more often?

Meh...  it works in the NFL.  Set the rules and they'll figure it out.  If you've got $64M in committed salary and need to give $2M to your rookie, you'll just have to find someone who will take one of your players off your hands.  If you don't want to do that, you just need to build enough cushion into your budget each year to pay your rooks and accumulate new talent.

Of course, the other direction the CBA could potentially move towards is the NFL's "big-signing bonus as your guaranteed money" structure.  Don't see the union agreeing to that, and my preference is always for a simpler approach.

EDIT: One other weakness of my proposal that I still need to ponder...  what happens if the cap goes down, as was expected to happen this season?  The union's going to demand that the cap be linked to total league revenues.  What happens to teams that are close to the cap, and the cap comes down $3M or $4M?  One possibility would be defining player salaries as a percentage of the cap (i.e. LeBron signs for "25% of the Cap" instead of a fixed dollar amount), in which case a rising cap means he (and everyone else in the league) gets paid more $$ and if the cap falls everyone takes a proportionate haircut.

But, that's complicated, and I don't like complicated.

I liked your hard cap proposal, TP.  And I agree with your statement, "they will figure it out".  I think that statement has more to it than meets the eye.  It's not Stern's job to hold GM's hands and help them figure out how to deal with a hard cap.  Its the GM's job to figure out the best way to manage salaries.  And it's a team owner's job to find a competent person to be a capable enough GM to do that.  Teams should start replacing former crushes like Isaiah and McHale with smart people with MBA or Law degrees like Theo Epstein to run teams.

About your cap going down problem.  Just have it be an impossibility.  Cap can go up, but never down.  Only twice since its inception has it ever gone down.  So just have it remaining the same be the worst case scenario.

One thing I'd edit is that I think there should be a rookie scale.  Rookie contracts have killed the NFL.  Other than that, I really liked your proposal.  It couldn't come into effect until 6 years from now though because teams made signings under the current cap conditions and shouldn't be punished because of that.

[the_Bird]

I'd be leery of not letting the cap come down if league revenues come down, if for no other reason than I don't like how Stern's been running the League, I don't like how a lot of teams are run, and I have serious concerns about the NBA becoming more of an also-ran.  Owners are also going to want some built-in restrictions on salaries if the top line DOES contract, the cap only being allowed to expand is far too favorable to the players.

Simple solution might be that if league revenues contract, the (hard) salary cap also contracts but not for a year or two; give teams a little time to free up space.  The cap should also be based on a three-year moving average of league revenues, to smooth out some of the natural volatility.  

[erisred]

I'd be leery of not letting the cap come down if league revenues come down, if for no other reason than I don't like how Stern's been running the League, I don't like how a lot of teams are run, and I have serious concerns about the NBA becoming more of an also-ran.  Owners are also going to want some built-in restrictions on salaries if the top line DOES contract, the cap only being allowed to expand is far too favorable to the players.

Simple solution might be that if league revenues contract, the (hard) salary cap also contracts but not for a year or two; give teams a little time to free up space.  The cap should also be based on a three-year moving average of league revenues, to smooth out some of the natural volatility.  

The rumors are that in the new CBA the owners want to do away with fully guaranteed contracts (or at least reduce the number of years) and be able to void (or recalculate) *existing* contracts when the CBA goes into effect.

I think a hard cap based on a % of total revenue is the right approach, from the owners perspective and there would probably be a hard minimum as well. Instead of signing players to $X dollars, a better approach might be to sign players to X% of the cap. Perhaps, teams must sign players for at least 50% of the cap, but for no more than 100% of the cap. Thus in a year where the Hard Cap is set at $70 million a team must pay out $35 million in salaries and may not pay out more than $70 million.

The players aren't going to want to give up fully guaranteed contracts or allow for voiding/refactoring of existing contracts, but I don't think they are in a strong position to resist a lockout.

[twinbree]

They probably won't. If Rondo decides to do Team USA I hope Danny and him come up with a plan to recruit a couple of his teammates to play with him in Boston with the capspace we're clearing. I bet that would get their attention.

[guava_wrench]

They probably won't. If Rondo decides to do Team USA I hope Danny and him come up with a plan to recruit a couple of his teammates to play with him in Boston with the capspace we're clearing. I bet that would get their attention.

Why would they care?

[Rondo_is_better]

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=5371956

ESPN front page article about the tampering. F all these guys.

[Mike-Dub]

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=5371956

ESPN front page article about the tampering. F all these guys.

Yes, but Mark Cuban said he is going to tell Stern to investigate.  So now Stern has to.  Thank you Mark Cuban.

[Rashi]

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=5371956

ESPN front page article about the tampering. F all these guys.

Yes, but Mark Cuban said he is going to tell Stern to investigate.  So now Stern has to.  Thank you Mark Cuban.

Oh did he?

Gotta love Cuban.

[dark_lord]

stern doesnt have the guts to overturn this even if he could prove there was tampering. not when it involves lbj and wade

[Mike-Dub]

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=5371956

ESPN front page article about the tampering. F all these guys.

Yes, but Mark Cuban said he is going to tell Stern to investigate.  So now Stern has to.  Thank you Mark Cuban.

Oh did he?

Gotta love Cuban.

Yes he did.  It even says it in the ESPN article you linked lol.