Thought Experiment: Two Tiered Cap

[PhoSita]

Take a moment with me to venture into fantasy land.

Lately I've gotten really tired of all the talk of superstar players wanting to find a new situation.

It feels like every star player wants to change situations every year or two.

This makes it impossible to invest emotionally in any superstar player that has less than two years left on his contract.

Despite this, the league has apparently very little incentive to change this dynamic.  Fans love rumors about stars, fans of bad teams like to imagine that a superstar might join their team, and the media will cover the NBA 24/7 if you give them superstar rumors to report on and discuss 24/7.


Part of the problem, I think, is that the product on the floor feels secondary to the big picture soap opera / chess game of which player will end up signing where.  Why?  Well, maybe the answer is at least partly because we all know who is going to win the title this year, just like we knew who was going to win last year and the year before that.



So how about we devise a solution wherein we maintain the player movement and 24/7 rumor cycle while also making it much harder for any one team to put together a superstar core that is distinctly superior to most or all of the competition?


My idea:

Every team in the league has two "star player" slots. 

A player signed in one of these slots has no limit on what they can earn in annual salary. 

The minimum salary for a "star slot" is above average starter money, e.g. $20 million.

The "star player" slot doesn't count against the cap.

However, the max contract length for a "star player" is one year.

Each team has to fill its two star slots each year.


All "non-star" players have a max salary of, let's say, $15 million, i.e. decent starter money.

"Non-star" players can be signed to contracts of up to 5 years in length.




Every team would have the ability, then, to put together a relatively stable supporting cast of "non-star" players, while the players with enough talent and production to warrant interest for a "star" slot would either change teams frequently or would need to be kept happy. 

But isn't that where we're headed anyway?

At least this way you wouldn't need to have teams tearing down their whole roster in order to have the cap space to attempt to compete for signing a star.

Nor would there be any more of these hostage-trade-negotiation situations where a star player forces his team to take a mediocre deal because he demands a trade and names his destination.  Trade negotiations of that kind would no longer make sense because every star would be on an expiring contract, always.


You might say -- wouldn't this basically doom small teams to perpetual mediocrity? 

To which I would reply: Isn't that more or less where we are now?  Any small market team that drafts a superstar knows that unless they're contending by the time the guy they drafted hits year 5 or 6, they're going to be seeing news reports that their young superstar would like a trade to LA or NY.

This would, at least, force a more even distribution of players talented enough that teams would want to pay "star slot" money.


Look, I know this is crazy and will never happen.  But I'm tired of two things:

(1) One or two megasuperduper teams dominating the league to the point that the playoffs lack any suspense after the 2nd round.

(2) Superstar players scheming to create new megasuperduper teams and sabotaging their current teams in the process.


If the scheming and player movement is inevitable, I'd like to see it incorporated into the CBA.  That way, at least, teams could still try to build like, an actual team, without having to try to either keep up with the superstar-trade arms race (by operating endlessly in asset collection mode) or get sabotaged by it when the superstar they drafted takes the team hostage for a year or more.

[droopdog7]

I think teams should be able to sign players they drafted to any salary they want.

[RodyTur10]

An additional idea is to disallow players to take paycuts. Any player in free agency can choose between the teams that offer him the most money and can not take a paycut to sign for a superteam.

But I fully support the point you make.

It's ridiculous that a team like the Knicks that has made terrible decisions and have a bad organization and culture, might be in play to create a superteam out of nothing.

The Knicks have won just 1 playoff series in the last 19 years!
Over that period they had 11 different coaches and 7 GM's.   

It's just stupid and makes the NBA far less attractive. Good organizations like for instance the Celtics, Raptors, Bucks, Pacers, Nets, Jazz, Trail Blazers and Mavericks should be reaping the rewards of their work.

[Green-18]

I think teams should be able to sign players they drafted to any salary they want.

Agreed.  Something needs to be done to shake things up, but there should never be a scenario that limits teams from re-signing players that they drafted.  For example, Golden State should never be forced into a situation where they can't retain Steph, Klay, and Draymond.

[Roy H.]

I don't like the idea of even more movement of stars.  It would make the league even more mercenary friendly.

I do think eliminating the max salary, and hardening the cap even more, would solve a lot of problems.  Of course, a hard cap is very unlikely to happen.

[SHAQATTACK]

i like a straight hard  cap .  no taxes , no going over .  You have X dollars to spend .  If three stars want to be together , fine they can decide how much each wants to take and the rest goes to fill out the team. You can' t sign a player for amount that exceeds the cap period.

The tax system encourages teams to try and have mega star studded teams .    Teams have to decidehow they spend their money , they can give it all to Lebron if they want , and play with guys off the street . If they think people will watch that ...fine.   Players work for a franchise .  If they can't take that , then theycan sell used cars for a living and see how they like that.

That puts everybody on level playing  field .

The owners are allowing this non senseto take place . Lebron either followsmthe rules or he can go to Japan or Europe and play.

i believe laws of economics and greed will keep more than two mega stars from teaming up on one team at a time most of the time.anyways. 

or ....give small market teams a higher cap . .....big market teams like NYC have more earning potiental .....compenstate that with bigger caps in Smaller cities. something needs to be done to every player who is a star from wanting to goto CA.  or just let them have their own King James league in CA.  Throw out the Ca teams .

[PhoSita]

I don't like the idea of even more movement of stars.  It would make the league even more mercenary friendly.

I do think eliminating the max salary, and hardening the cap even more, would solve a lot of problems.  Of course, a hard cap is very unlikely to happen.

I agree - I don't like the mercenary stuff either.

But the thing is, the NBA likes it, NBA players like it, and casual NBA fans like it.

So what's the point in fighting it?


This idea is just as much fantasy as a hard cap, but I'm trying to think of a way to deal with it that doesn't run contrary to the aligned interests of the league, the players, and the majority of (casual) fans.

[PhoSita]

An additional idea is to disallow players to take paycuts. Any player in free agency can choose between the teams that offer him the most money and can not take a paycut to sign for a superteam.

See, I don't know how you could force players to not take paycuts.

Don't we like the notion of players, at least in certain circumstances, taking less $$ in order to win more?


But we don't like it when it goes to an extreme and it feels like one team stacks the deck in their favor.


I think the answer is to structure the market for star players such that they can get paid a lot of money by a lot of different teams, but they would have to take a major, major pay cut (like 50% of their value or more) in order to sign (or re-sign) with a team that already has multiple highly paid stars.


The problem with allowing teams that draft a guy to pay a player way more than anybody else is it could easily end up where that player signs the deal and then demands a trade anyway once he's gotten paid, or the team has to so drastically overpay a guy to keep him on the team that it hamstrings their ability to build a team.

[libermaniac]

i like a straight hard  cap .  no taxes , no going over .  You have X dollars to spend .  If three stars want to be together , fine they can decide how much each wants to take and the rest goes to fill out the team. You can' t sign a player for amount that exceeds the cap period.

The tax system encourages teams to try and have mega star studded teams .    Teams have to decidehow they spend their money , they can give it all to Lebron if they want , and play with guys off the street . If they think people will watch that ...fine.   Players work for a franchise .  If they can't take that , then theycan sell used cars for a living and see how they like that.

That puts everybody on level playing  field .

The owners are allowing this non senseto take place . Lebron either followsmthe rules or he can go to Japan or Europe and play.

i believe laws of economics and greed will keep more than two mega stars from teaming up on one team at a time most of the time.anyways. 

or ....give small market teams a higher cap . .....big market teams like NYC have more earning potiental .....compenstate that with bigger caps in Smaller cities. something needs to be done to every player who is a star from wanting to goto CA.  or just let them have their own King James league in CA.  Throw out the Ca teams .

I agree with this, and I'd add one more wrinkle.  No max on individual salaries.  Right now, since they are capped, it's not a "huge" sacrifice to join other stars and take a $10million haircut, but if there were no max, some guys would be getting $60million, so joining other stars would cost you dearly.

[slamtheking]

very difficult situation to remedy.

I think the parts of a solution would include:
- a much harder cap on salaries.  You cannot exceed X amount of total payroll except maybe to sign your draft picks.
- unlimited salary under the cap for a player.  If someone wants to pay Lebron $50 mill, let them.
- the flip side of that is another review of what's a fair minimum that would raise the pay for the end of bench guys and possibly cut into the max salaries offered by teams
- free agents must take the highest offering -- this could be further defined by either total contract amount or per-season average of the deal.  This prevents players from taking a pay cut to retain over-stacked teams.
- no opting out of deals -- no player or team options on contracts. 
- no players demanding trades while under contract.  they signed a contract, they honor it for the length of the deal
- move the draft later in the summer after free agency's first month.  This should help teams determine who to draft and possibly include picks in trades where a team's needs are better known.  Trades can occur at the same time as free agency.
- teams must carry at least 14 people on the roster going into the season.  if they budget badly where they don't have the money left to pay a 14th agreement, a major penalty is applied whether that be financial or a forfeited draft pick can be debated.

just some thoughts

[PhoSita]

i like a straight hard  cap .  no taxes , no going over .  You have X dollars to spend .  If three stars want to be together , fine they can decide how much each wants to take and the rest goes to fill out the team. You can' t sign a player for amount that exceeds the cap period.

The tax system encourages teams to try and have mega star studded teams .    Teams have to decidehow they spend their money , they can give it all to Lebron if they want , and play with guys off the street . If they think people will watch that ...fine.   Players work for a franchise .  If they can't take that , then theycan sell used cars for a living and see how they like that.

That puts everybody on level playing  field .

The owners are allowing this non senseto take place . Lebron either followsmthe rules or he can go to Japan or Europe and play.

i believe laws of economics and greed will keep more than two mega stars from teaming up on one team at a time most of the time.anyways. 

or ....give small market teams a higher cap . .....big market teams like NYC have more earning potiental .....compenstate that with bigger caps in Smaller cities. something needs to be done to every player who is a star from wanting to goto CA.  or just let them have their own King James league in CA.  Throw out the Ca teams .

I agree with this, and I'd add one more wrinkle.  No max on individual salaries.  Right now, since they are capped, it's not a "huge" sacrifice to join other stars and take a $10million haircut, but if there were no max, some guys would be getting $60million, so joining other stars would cost you dearly.

The players union will never agree to remove the max salary so long as there's a salary cap just because it would end up substantially limiting the earning capacity of 90% of the players.

You'd have the large majority of players earning less than $5 million while the upper crust of the league earned $40-50 million+.

That might be "fair" in the sense of adequately compensating the truly valuable players, but the player union would never agree to it.

[JBcat]

I don’t like the idea of a hard cap for the sole reason it penalizes teams that draft well, and want to keep all of their young players.

I do think it’s fine that after a player is with a team 7 or 8 years of team control, and 2nd contract after RFA status that they have the freedom to test the waters.

This 2 tier idea you are limiting a team to 2 star players which I don’t really like.  Let’s say Tatum and Brown reach their full potential (and not traded for Davis), we would have to decide at some point which 2 out of Horford, Hayward, Irving, Tatum, and Brown we want to put I to those 2 max slots.  We also don’t land both Ray and KG in 2007.

It’s not perfect but I don’t have a huge problem with the current system.   The Warriors took advantage of a huge cap spike, but that normally doesn’t happen, and with all the teams the teams that have had cap space over the years (besides Warriors situation),  I can really only think of the Heat that did what they did in FA. 

Paul George and Kawhi Leonard are 2 good examples of you don’t get what you wish for, and the Spurs and Pacers actually made out well in those trades.

[gift]

I think teams should be able to sign players they drafted to any salary they want.

I've always favored this line of thinking. But maybe I just value the draft too highly. And I'd prefer moving to Mike Zarren's Draft Wheel if this were the case.

[PhoSita]

I suspect that under the system I propose, many younger players coming off their rookie deal would opt for a long term deal at the maximum non-star value.  It's harder to say no to a long term deal when you've never earned better than the rookie scale.

To the extent that the true superstar youngsters would forego that in favor of chasing a star contract, I say so be it.

I'd like better talent distribution throughout the league, and if that creates a disincentive for teams to hoard draft assets, especially tanking or trading current players for future picks so as to obtain multiple high lotto picks, that will probably result in a better average product on the floor in the present.

If you give teams a way to hoard talent and gain a major advantage over their competitors (e.g. by drafting multiple stars and then signing another star or two with cap space before the young guys get paid), they're going to go for broke trying to do that. 

Which means that some teams will succeed and be stacked compared to their competition, and other teams will fail miserably and return to being terrible just a few years after tanking shamelessly.  I don't think that's a healthy dynamic.

[BitterJim]

What about keeping pretty much everything the same, but adding a new contract type that has no max value (for simplicity we'll call it a Lebron-rule contract), and adding a new type of rights (similar to Bird rights, again for simplicity we'll call them Lebron rights) that allows you to sign for a Lebron-rule contract after 4 years with a team (this would probably have the same rules as Bird rights as far as trades, etc. go). Limit it to one Lebron-rule contract per team, and drop the max salaries to make it more palettable to the NBA middle class (lower-tier stars wouldn't be happy, but no plan will make everyone happy)

Superstars would have the option of signing back with their team for big money, leaving for a team with massive cap space (that doesn't already have a superstar), or sign with a team that already has a Lebron-rule contract for a massive pay decrease. That would push superstars toward either staying long term or signing with a team that doesn't already have a superstar. It would also attempt to minimize the paycut for the NBA middle class that is expected with most ideas that remove max contracts, by putting some of that burden onto stars that aren't superstars.