League Circles wrote:The only guys artificially limited are guys making the max but worth more, guys on rookie scale deals (many/most of whom are actually overpaid I'd argue instead of underpaid). In a sense you could say that a lot of guys are artificially limited by their contract status, because many guys improve or decline substantially over the course of their deals.
If you view the value of a contract _only_ in its present oncourt ability, a good chunk of rookies are overpaid, but if you view the value of a contract as being part present value and part future value, then rookies are vastly, vastly underpaid. Also the ones that hit are underpaid by so much that it makes up for probably 10 guys who don't pan out.
It's like the stock market, if you bought Amazon 20 years ago, it doesn't matter how many other losers you also bought, your portfolio killed the S&P500. The sum total of rookie deals are vastly underpaid. If you look at the total value of a rookie class when they hit year 5, I guarantee you it's way more expensive than it was in year 4, even when the rookie deals take a steep upward curve and even accounting for the 0s for guys who don't pan out at all.
There are obviously issues where guys value changes over the course of their deal due to injury or positive/negative changes in performance as well, so that's a good addition, though a lot of those guys are probably similarly valuable in many respects, but people are just annoyed because they aren't super valuable. People want guys to generate massive wins on their expensive deals, but not everyone can win, so probably something like 70% of teams each year will be disappointed.
The excess doesn't have to go to anyone. If it's not paid out directly in voluntary player contracts then everybody just gets prorated bonuses at the end of the year, so that issue shouldn't affect relative worth.
Yes, everyone could choose to have a worse team and not sign anyone. Unsurprisingly though, the teams seem to want to win and sign players in a zero-sum market where they bid up the best players available rather than just pro-rating out more money to players under contract and having worse teams.
We also don't have anything remotely approaching relative salary parity between teams.
Relative in the sense that the way the league rules are structured, there are very limited bidders. Yes, not everyone has the same contracts given out (and certainly no where near the same cash given out when you account for luxury tax), but the teams that are over the cap are largely prevented from bidding, teams over the various aprons have structural rules limiting what they are allowed to do.
From a bidding perspective, you can't just offer up anything for the players you want.
Van vleet is an interesting case study, because IMO he's highly overrated / overpaid, but ironically, I think that's WHY he's overpaid. He's one of those guys that you can actually get if you pay up. The same could be true of Coby or Ayo, but I think most teams will assume that we will "match" (exceed via 5 year deal and larger raises) and that will scare a lot of suitors off. I could be wrong though. Also, VV got only 2 years guaranteed.
I think the semantics are important here, and you put "match" in quotes for a reason, but to blow this out. These negotiations will likely take place illegally during the quiet period, and a team will have no cost to offering either guy a 4 year max. If they say no and the Bulls agree to a 5 year max under the table at the same time, then it doesn't hurt the team for having talked to them and made the offer because unlike restricted free agency, there is no offer sheet and their money isn't tied up.
Again, for that scenario to play out, both guys have to stay playing really well over the next two years, but if that happens you're in a tough spot with both guys. The Bulls getting forced into two five year maxes is exactly the reason why you might consider such a trade now. I'm not saying you have to do it, there's no obvious "trade these guys and profit" plan, just that tying up 70M-80M in those two guys probably also puts you in a similarly tough spot to where you are now.
