Surely the NBA saw this coming, right?

[kozlodoev]

The point is they took less than they were still worth to circumvent cap rules. Rules should be enforced.

You can't control what contract players should accept. They are not indentured servants.

[rocknrollforyoursoul]

It's their choice to sign. No ones forcing Zaza to take the contract he took.

You're right that it's their choice, but it defeats the purpose of a cap, which is to push teams toward parity and a more even playing field. So if there's a way to get around that purpose, either that way has to be addressed, or they should just eliminate the cap.

[nickagneta]

Actually don't see a problem with what is happening. Every player values their services at a different price and every team puts value on a player at a certain price. These values are all over the place. What one team might pay a certain free agent another team might think is ridiculous and never want to pay that salary so in essence they value them at a minimum price. Why should a team be forced to value a player at a price that is above what they value them? Who is a committee to tell a team what price they should value at?

The owners would never agree to a proposal of valuing players. If they did the players union would want to severely increase max salaries because how do you put a value on what a player like Lebron, Curry, or Durant is worth? Why should a player be forced to take a certain amount of money at a minimum from teams they don't want to play for when they are willing to play for less to play for teams they do want to play for? This proposal stands zero chance of ever making it into the CBA.

[ederson]

Parity is  nice but you can't force it like that. You  can't have 10 teams as real contenders....
I hate the idea of having everything regulated this way.

Maybe instead of having the FAs negotiating the best deal let's have a second draft so the bad teams can sign the best FA to a contract decided by the league.... That will create even more parity.

[fairweatherfan]

Payton and Malone are on the twilight of their careers and far from the players they once were. Now if a 28 year old Jordan joined the Showtime Lakers or the Bird Celtics, it would be a different question.

I've been trying to think of the best historical parallel for this kind of move.  So far the closest thing I can come up with would be a 23-year-old Shaq joining the 72 win Bulls in the 96 offseason (instead of going to LA).  Shaq was younger than Durant is, but the Bulls were older than Curry et al, and it's a similar historically stacked team that could still use a guy at his position.  And you can imagine how scary that Bulls team would've been.

[libermaniac]

Very simple solution. 1) hard cap with no exceptions 2) no max on individual players.

[Fafnir]

They did see it coming which is why they were pushing for salary cap smoothing to prevent this sort of freedom for elite teams to add to their cores. This is largely possible due to the spike in cap space.

Otherwise it requires a hollowed our roster and sacrificing money, which is what Miami pulled off. That is a lot harder.

[bopna]

I like the 30m franchise tag but make it bigger..say 40M. Not many reams will be able to afford that because its going to be exclusive to the Top5 players in the league. Its pretty easy to spot those because they are the creme of the crop. A supermax type of contract that no team is allowed to have more than one. This way Durant cant team up with Curry bec Curry is present MVP and despite his bargain current contract..he will be assesed by the league as a supermax value guy simply because he is the MVP. This is the only way superteams can be prevented from happening. Give players assessed value. Put thwm in tiers that upper echelon players..top 5 are not allowed to team up period...bird can have his Pippen but Bird cannot have Jordan...the possible exception perhaps is the team drafted the guy and developed him in this case Curry and Klay and Draymond were all drafted by GS so thats a great move by the team because they developed them but KD or Lebron or CP3 or Griffin or Westbrook is barred feom joining them..this ishow I think it should be done.

I really dont know how the league should prevent superteams from existing but man in the interest of Parity something should be done. We dont want the champs already determined before the games have even started.