Official CBA/Labour Talks Discussion Thread II

[Rapsfan07]

Not necessarily. Let's say Chicago loses Deng under a hard/flex cap system and take back Ariza and a draft pick or something. Now obviously this would have had to take place earlier but doesn't that increase the chance of keeping Paul and making one more team competitive instead of Paul running to NYK to team up with 2 other superstars? Or if Bosh was be traded to Milwaukee, doesn't that make the Bucks a much more competitive team? You also have to remember that players looks at team's squads before signing as a free agent. Maybe a Indiana Pacers with a Bosh has a better chance of signing Nene?

Uh... Milwaukee getting Bosh changes nothing at the top. Does it make them better? Ya. Does it make them a contender? No.

I don't really get what you're arguing here. If middle of the pack teams get a bit better it does not make them able to take on LeBron/Wade and Kobe/Gasol. It certainly does not make them contenders.

In fact, you're kinda arguing against yourself. If Paul goes to New York then there's another team in the mix who can win a championship. If he stays in N.O., then there's fewer teams capable of bringing home the title.

Okay. And in the process of building NYK, how many teams have/will be losing money?

[Ponchos]

Okay. And in the process of building NYK, how many teams have/will be losing money?

With the proposed new revenue sharing and BRI split around 50-52%? Very few.

[J-Roc]

Having more depth does make good teams great. Dallas was able to carry both Caron Butler and Shawn Marion. Lakers had Steve Blake and Derek Fisher. With less depth, even more pressure is put on the stars. Young LeBron could carry the Cavs to 60win seasons, but hellz no would old man Kobe (with old man Pau) be able to do the same without a lot of help.

Then you have Wade and LeBron. They're good, but without Bosh they'd have to be better.

On top of that, good teams wouldn't just be able to cover up an injury. That's how things would even out.

There are no guarantees. In any given period, maybe one player like Shaq or LeBron would dominate the way MJ did. But at least then you can feel like it's about the player, and not that it's about how our team has customs and the metric system so groups of players would never come here.

[Indeed]

I neither see hard cap can provide parity nor spread talents across all teams.
As I argued, a farm team with rookie salary contract based on professional level league minutes would help owners, but I don't see owners care much, except for teams like San Antonio and a few, which they bought D-leagues for developing players. When they have a farm team, they can add another round to the draft if needed.
I would prefer the owners give more to the players on RBI, but shorten all contracts for a year to reduce bad contracts. However, not only this contradict with the owners, also it is the opposite of the players. So I think we will be disappointed for this new CBA, nothing will change much, and more super teams are here to come.

[ATLTimekeeper]

Lots of reasons to dislike expansion:

- Do the Raptors have a better shot at a championship or a worse one if there are 34 teams in the league?

- Expanding into weaker and weaker markets leads to instability. You'll have the owners crying again that the system is broken and the players need to take a reduced share of the revenues. Whats this mean? More labor strife, more lockouts.

No need for more lockouts with a hard cap and generous revenue sharing. You're pointing to a problem that has hypothetically been fixed.

- The talent pool definitely gets watered down. The NBA is just recently recovering from the last rounds of expansion in terms of talent per team.

I don't recall there being a shortage of talent. Compared to when? Seems like a subjective notion. Basketball is growing in popularity around the world. There's something like 300 million people are playing basketball in China. That's almost the population of the entire US playing basketball. There will be new talent streams coming from all over the world. Just like Europe provided a boost, and South America provided a boost.

You're fooling yourself if you think expansion will alleviate stars grouping together in preferred markets.

I never said that. But a hard cap without a max salary would.

[C Court]

The New York Times is reporting the CBA is almost done. Only dispute is over BRI. Owners insist on 50/50 while players won't budge off 52.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/sport ... r=1&src=tp

Tentative agreements are already in place on the following major items:

¶ Luxury-tax rate: Teams will be charged $1.50 per $1 spent beyond a threshold, replacing the previous dollar-for-dollar tax, according to people who have seen the plan.

To further discourage spending, the tax will increase for every $5 million spent beyond the threshold: to $1.75 after $5 million, $2.25 after $10 million and $3 after $15 million.

Under this system, the Los Angeles Lakers would have paid $42.5 million in taxes last season, compared with $20 million under the old formula. (The rates could still change based on other tradeoffs.)

¶ Contract lengths: Players with “Bird” rights will be eligible for five-year deals, while others will be limited to four. The previous C.B.A. allowed for six-year (Bird) and five-year deals. The 1999 C.B.A. allowed for seven-year (Bird) and six-year deals.

¶ Raises: Annual raises will be reduced by several percentage points, possibly as low as 5 percent for Bird players and 3.5 percent for non-Bird players. The prior deal allowed raises as high as 10.5 percent (Bird) and 8 percent.

¶ Midlevel exception: It will start at $5 million, a decrease of $800,000. The contract length and annual raises attached to the exception remain under discussion.

¶ Amnesty clause: Each team will be permitted to waive one player, with pay — anytime during the life of the C.B.A. — and have his salary be exempt from the cap and the luxury tax. Its use will be limited to players already under contract as of July 1, 2011.

¶ Stretch exception: Teams will be permitted to stretch out payments to waived players, spreading out the cap hit, over several seasons. The payment schedule will be set by doubling the years left on the contract and adding one. (Thus a team waiving a player with two years left could pay him over five years.)

[CPT]

^ Sounds pretty reasonable.

I'd still like to see longer control over drafted players, with higher compensation for those players. Maybe allow them to sign extensions earlier and have them kick in earlier, but if not, they would hit restricted free agency later, and unrestricted even later than that.

I'd also like to see sign and trades replaced by a set system of compensatory draft picks (might have to scrap the rule where you are unable to owe draft picks in consecutive years for this to work). Or if not, just make it so the signing player cannot get the Bird rights contract. Make it so a Bird rights player can't be traded until a set date (probably that date in December when signed free agents can usually be traded).

Something to get rid of players being able to force trades would be nice, but don't really see how it could be worked into a CBA.

[Rapsfan07]

I wanted to get rid of the sign and trade too but its not that bad and it could still work. I also wanted a tougher tax, harder cap and a franchise tag but it seems too late for that at this stage. And the "stretch exception" doesn't really sound like an exception but more of a payment plan to a waived player.

Over this deal isn't too different from the current CBA (you'd think it would be with the amount of time this has been taking). Just hoping that the age restriction stays the same.

All that's left now if for the players to meet the owners at 50/50 or take some salary rollbacks.

[Tofubeque]

Figures. Not much change at all to the system. Owners just want to keep making money while their teams suck forever.

[anj]

¶ Amnesty clause: Each team will be permitted to waive one player, with pay — anytime during the life of the C.B.A. — and have his salary be exempt from the cap and the luxury tax. Its use will be limited to players already under contract as of July 1, 2011.

¶ Stretch exception: Teams will be permitted to stretch out payments to waived players, spreading out the cap hit, over several seasons. The payment schedule will be set by doubling the years left on the contract and adding one. (Thus a team waiving a player with two years left could pay him over five years.)

I find it funny that, since both of the above are cap-related exceptions, they actually make it EASIER for teams to spend MORE money.

[C Court]

¶ Amnesty clause: Each team will be permitted to waive one player, with pay — anytime during the life of the C.B.A. — and have his salary be exempt from the cap and the luxury tax. Its use will be limited to players already under contract as of July 1, 2011.

¶ Stretch exception: Teams will be permitted to stretch out payments to waived players, spreading out the cap hit, over several seasons. The payment schedule will be set by doubling the years left on the contract and adding one. (Thus a team waiving a player with two years left could pay him over five years.)

I find it funny that, since both of the above are cap-related exceptions, they actually make it EASIER for teams to spend MORE money.

To a large degree you're right. Look, anyone who really believed that the owners would implement a parity-driven system were not understanding what makes the owners tick. It's 'money'.

Having said that, the new system makes it MORE expensive to go over the cap and the luxury tax penalties will hit sooner and harder which should provide a drag on rampant over-spending.

An interesting question is what does Miami do? Assuming the soft cap drops and the luxury tax becomes more punitive, can Miami afford all of the Big Three with their old CBA annual increases?

Right now the base NBA cap is $58 million. Let's assume the new cap drops 12% to $51 million. Here is what Lebron, Bosh and Wade are set to earn over the next 3 years:

2011/12: $ 47.7 million
2012/13: $ 52.2 million
2013/14: $ 56.8 million

My guess is they don't make a move, but you can bet they'll give it some serious consideration.

[Rhettmatic]

To a large degree you're right. Look, anyone who really believed that the owners would implement a parity-driven system were not understanding what makes the owners tick. It's 'money'.

Yeah, I'm not sure why "parity" became the rallying call for people supportive of the owners. It's never been their real priority. And the NBA will never have the parity of the NHL or NFL simply due to the nature of the game.

Anyway, the only thing I really care about with a new CBA is that it doesn't raise the draft age.

[bboyskinnylegs]

The stretch exception will help teams erase big mistakes, so they don't get stuck with huge deals like Arenas/Lewis. Although that's a double edged sword since it might encourage some of the same stupid decisions. Are there any limits on the use of this proposed exception?

[highness]

WOW the cba is 95% done but they can't finish the deal over freaking 2%???? COME ON MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Rhettmatic]

WOW the cba is 95% done but they can't finish the deal over freaking 2%???? COME ON MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ken Berger implied in his last story that the problem was just that Stern and Hunter hadn't yet been given the authority by their respective groups to go to 51.

That narrative makes some sense to me. I think Stern was speaking directly to players in that last press conference, and the message was: your agents are keeping a deal from getting done (notice he said that Hunter claimed the agents wouldn't let him go below 52, then left the meeting). The doomsday stuff was meant to scare the hard-line agents/players and even owners into realizing that a deal needs to get done soon or both sides will continue to hemorrhage money.

My expectation is that the sides reconvene sometime fairly soon and a deal gets done, but maybe I'm underestimating the egos involved in this thing.

[dagger]

WOW the cba is 95% done but they can't finish the deal over freaking 2%???? COME ON MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Ken Berger implied in his last story that the problem was just that Stern and Hunter hadn't yet been given the authority by their respective groups to go to 51.

That narrative makes some sense to me. I think Stern was speaking directly to players in that last press conference, and the message was: your agents are keeping a deal from getting done (notice he said that Hunter claimed the agents wouldn't let him go below 52, then left the meeting). The doomsday stuff was meant to scare the hard-line agents/players and even owners into realizing that a deal needs to get done soon or both sides will continue to hemorrhage money.

My expectation is that the sides reconvene sometime fairly soon and a deal gets done, but maybe I'm underestimating the egos involved in this thing.

It seems hardly likely this will last beyond this week. The players seem to sense the end is near. Based on their Tweets, both DeRozan and Bargnani are going to be in Toronto in the next few days. I don't think that would be happening if either felt this was going to drag on.

[ATLTimekeeper]

The power agents have used the barnstorming card, race card, the in-the-pocket card... they're running out of plays.

[C Court]

Ken Berger implied in his last story that the problem was just that Stern and Hunter hadn't yet been given the authority by their respective groups to go to 51.

If either Stern or Hunter makes an offer of 51% BRI, the other side would accept, then make a few tweaks on the system side and the deal would be done.

If the players get 51% BRI, my guess is they'll have to give up something like luxury tax teams not having an MLE. If it settles at 50/50, the players may get a few more system concessions.

[C Court]

To a large degree you're right. Look, anyone who really believed that the owners would implement a parity-driven system were not understanding what makes the owners tick. It's 'money'.

Yeah, I'm not sure why "parity" became the rallying call for people supportive of the owners. It's never been their real priority. And the NBA will never have the parity of the NHL or NFL simply due to the nature of the game.

Parity was a PR ploy by the owners to gain sympathy from fans. When you peel back the onion, the NBA is no closer to parity:

- NO hard cap
- Big markets can still spend as much as they want if they are willing to pay higher penalties
- Amnesty gives big market teams a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card on one player mistake
- Stretch exemption reduces the cap hit on a waived player
- No indication of enhanced revenue sharing
- Players have one less year with their team = more player turnover

While the small market teams will see their costs lowered, the big market teams will enjoy a massive rise in revenues. Amnesty and Stretch Exemptions are good news for deep pocket owners.

I don't see this new CBA significantly deterring LA or Dallas from spending.

[Visceral]

I can't believe there's an actual possibility for our Raptors players to touch down somewhere in the US to play in about a month. A high one at that.

I'm actually excited. I want to see DeRozan beast it like a mad man.