DASMACKDOWN wrote:You are correct, technically it isnt max but you get my point. It seems like basically any player that shows promise will get 14-15 million dollar contracts going forward.
It seems like just yesterday we were complaining about Luol Dengs contract of 12 mil a year. A 21 yr old Deng in the current NBA today would have earned in the full max 5/85 in the open market.
I just dont like how these contracts leaves no middle ground. Its all or vet minimum. Guys who you think would get MLE or less are now making 8-9 mil.
The issue is, the baseline for each year gets higher and higher. Which causes the system to eventually break. You will have teams who never even make the playoffs in 10 years have a top 10 payroll. Teams going forward are going to have salaries that looks like the Isiah Thomas led Knicks team than the RC Buford led Spurs team.
Completely agree.
You even have guys like OJ Mayo making 8m annually, or even someone like Tyreke Evans, who has regressed as a player from his rookie season and has serious flaws in his game, who is now earning 11m annually.
I’m not sure what the answer is, though?
I mean, I would love to see a hard cap in place, perhaps franchise tags and max contracts no longer existing, but does that fix the issue, or only create new ones?
The NBA needs to fix it’s parity issues. You have middling teams like the Suns needing to overpay for talent just so they can put some wins on the board. There is a culture within the NBA that you need to maximise your brand and head to the biggest city possible, and that’s largely due to the inequality of opportunities presented by various teams.
I think the latest CBA took a good step in changing up the max deal, with incumbents being able to offer more years and % raises than rivals, but if they insist on keeping the max deal around, I’d like to see them tighten that even more.