TripleThreat wrote:Solace wrote:This is going to add an interesting dynamic. I hope it will help us. But we'll have to see. Does it mean that almost every team will be under the cap?
There is going to be a lockout and a massive labor war here.
A giant leap in the salary cap is bad for the owners, but also it's bad for the fans. When someone like STAT or Eddy Curry or Kenyon Martin or Mike Finley or Gilbert Arenas or Rashard Lewis get a fat franchise killing contract, it's great for that player's bank account, his agent and his family. It's not great for the rest of the fanbase of said team.
Adam Silver isn't really making a huge secret of it, he's desiring what the NFL has, which is the ability for a team to overhaul in a 2-3 year span with built in mechanisms for more competitive balance. MLB has followed the NFL's lead by changing it's playoff structure and changing aspects of it's draft and international player signings as well as revenue sharing for those same reasons.
A giant leap in the cap will naturally defeat many of the self protective mechanisms from the last CBA. While some team might get a boon in signing LBJ ( though he's likely to stay in Cleveland) a lot of other players will be overpaid and become cap/franchise killing contracts. Owners want no part of that anymore. They don't want an AK47 making a max deal anymore.
It's also an empowerment issue. When you have a player getting massive years and massive dollars and it's guaranteed, he's often less replaceable than the head coach and GM and front office. So instead of those guys doing their jobs trying to win, part of their job works to appease a kid in his twenties who is probably not as smart as he thinks he is about team building. People called Kevin McHale stupid for many of his Minnesota moves, but lots of those moves were designed to appease Kevin Garnett. Danny Ferry built something nice in Atlanta, good for him, but he got ripped to shreds over moves in Cleveland designed to appease LBJ. Deron Williams is a giant jackoff precisely for the reason that the league structure now allows for certain players making certain money to act like jackoffs, which drives away fans.
What the league desperately needs is widespread use of non guaranteed contracts and a hard cap. Then GMs and coaches are in the drivers seat. Won't or can't produce? Here you go, get the flying **** out of my locker room. You know the NFL is so competitive? Because barring some rare exceptions, 99 percent of the players are putting 150 percent effort at all times. Do your job or someone will take it from you.
For the Knicks, it's a double edged sword. More money helps from their poor cap management issues. However a lockout will stunt the development of their 2015 lottery pick. In said players critical sophomore year, he will be sitting at home when he should be working with his team.
The problem with a new union head and a new commish together is that both need to prove something in public. Roberts to needs to justify her position and so does Silver. So this will be a very bloody and very contested labor war here.
There will be one season with the huge cap before the players and owners can opt out of the collective bargaining agreement, I believe (the opt out is in 2017, the cap increase will happen in 2016). The league offered a deal with smoothing and the player Union rejected and now the increase is set to happen, lockout on the horizon or not. But maybe I'm wrong. This is how I understood it.
