JohnWallace44 wrote:Briggs, I do think that a salary reduction by percentage is the easiest way to fix the issues in the NBA. If they try to completely redesign the system, its going to mean an incredibly long lockout.
i think there is some very solid speculation that the owners are positioning themselves to got for a rollback, meaning cap and salary, and their leverage is a much more restrictive system.
Couple of facts. 1
1.) The NBA is NOT the NHL of a few years ago. Players have more leverage. The TV money the NBA generates is in another stratosphere.
2.) Current members of the NBA players union would have to ratify a new CBA, assuming by a substantial margin (2/3rds)
Now consider the max NBA contract is 6 years, and that is a not the average. By simple math it's pretty safe bet around 20% (maybe more) of all NBA players (and the crappy one's votes count equally as the stars) are unemployed at the end of every season and are looking for new contracts. Which makes %40 of the league in need of a new contract within a year of a new CBA being ratified.
If the owners are looking for a hardcap, and/or a greatly reduced cap, you'd be asking 40% of NBA players to either put themselves out of work or limit themselves to a minimum contract within 12 months.
How's that going to happen exactly?
Zack Randolph (for example) is going to vote to ratify a hardcap, which means he career might be over or at best someone will give him $1m?
I don't see it, and there are dozens more like him.
In order for the union not to break, if the owners are serious about changes, players are going to have to collectively give something back. College players will likely get shafted some more, because the current player won't mind taking from them. But the union won't agree to highly restrictive hard cap rules. It would be committing professional suicide for too many players need to ratify.
And the owners KNOW this.
Rollbacks, rookie contracts get taken a bite out of, and slight cap concessions is likely where this is going to wind up.
