Daddy 801 wrote:stitches wrote:SoCalJazzFan wrote:I'd be surprised if the Lakers aren't the next superfriend superteam by the end of next week. As a fan outside of the couple of superteams, this really sucks! I hope the NBA does something to curtail this.
This is indeed such an abomination of a dynamic. How can a team suck so bad for so long, give some of the worst contracts in the league to horrible players and then wake up and be FA destination overnight, while teams like the Jazz have done everything right, have built their team the right way, haven't given albatrosses of contracts, have drafted well, have made smart free agent acquisitions and we still cannot even get a meeting with the top tier FAs. Complete and utter BS. If we cannot get a top tier FA this year or next, IMO it will never happen. We just will have to give up on the idea altogether and operate with the assumption that it will never happen. Just strike high end free agency as a strategy off our repertoire and just try to maximize the other ways of acquiring talent.
Until we get rid of max contracts, have a hard cap, and also make players hit the market and have all teams set their value we will never have a league with a level playing field.
The only team that should be able to get LeBron at a discount is Cleveland due to having bird rights(an max for LeBron is a discount). If he (or any free agent) chooses to leave the team with bird rights they should have to hit the open market and ANY team can then set his value. If Dallas said they were willing to pay LeBron 55 million then the Lakers should be forced to pay that much as well. The only way a team should be able to get around this is a sign and trade and Clev would then have incentive to SnT LeBron and get back assets. Every player should have to hit the open market and have their value set. This is the real answer. No player should be able to take a discount. They can sign anywhere they want as free agents, they just should never be allowed to take a lower value than their worth. I’ve been saying this is the answer for about 5 years. It’s the only way to fix things.
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Hard cap? Sure. Makes almost 100% sense. (luxury tax does really help some smaller market teams stay relevant, IMO.)
No max on contracts? Maybe, but then bad contracts become even worse, and strangle that team big time. Unless there's a way a team can buy out bad contracts, perhaps. The idea of forcing a player to play for whoever is willing to pay most is totally unrealistic & unfair though. (And I almost never take the side of the spoiled, overpaid, athlete.)
No draft? No-way, no how, nuh-uh! = Overpaying for "potential", players flocking to the big markets right out of the gates. (Many players end up liking places like Utah, Colorado, Minnesota, etc., once drafted there, but it's very unlikely would even give them a shot if not drafted there.) Smaller markets would have to gamble on overpaying for "potential", because it's the only way they players would come under most circumstances. Hate the no-draft idea. There's a reason that every professional sport has a draft. It promotes balance, rewards good FO's/talent evaluation, and allows teams to have a shot at landing top, young, talent despite demographics (unless the player is douchey and says he won't play/workout for certain teams, which is a growing issue, but has been around a while ... right Kobe?)
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