Yet another new CBA

[golfer2]

My suggestions for a new (improved?) CBA.



1. Make it more difficult for teams to sign multiple superstars and make it much more likely that they could keep thier own draft picks.





Limit the cap space for any team to 20% of the salary cap. The cap for the 2010/11 season was $58,044,000 and 20% of that is $11,608,800. It would be highly unlikely that Miami could have signed both LeBron James and Chris Bosh using the amount of $11,608,000 - would they (Bosh and James) have "settled" for 1/2 that amount ($5,804,400) each? Also unlikely that they could have signed just one maximum FA - the FA would have to give up a lot of money.

Teams would have "Bird rights" on their own FA's - with some changes:

* They could sign their own FA's to the same maximum salaries as in the present CBA (30% of the salary cap (for the first year) for 7-9 year veterans).
* They could also offer them a "signing bonus" of 10% of the salary cap - to be added to just the first year salary. So, Miami could have offered Wade a first year salary of 30% of the salary cap plus the 10% bonus - for a total of $23,217,600 (same for Cleveland with LeBron and Toronto with Bosh). Raises would be the same as at present - 10.5% in subsequent years. Contracts for a team's own FA's would be limited to 5 years - contracts for other FA's would be limited to 4 years (more on contracts later).
* With this significant change in possible cap space, teams would not "gut" their rosters to try to create cap space - since they could not use it anyway.
* This would also make it much more likely that superstars would stay with the team that originally drafted them.


2. Change the maximum length of contracts to 5 years for your own FA's and 4 years for other FA's. Make contracts guaranteed for only the their first 2 years with all subsequent years being team options. Contracts after 2 years could be partially guaranteed up to a maximum of 10% of their "normal" value.



The maximum contracts that could have been offered to James, Bosh, or Wade by their own teams:

2010/11: $23,217,600 ($17,413,200 + $5,804,400)

2011/12: $19,241,586

2012/13: $21,069,972 (partially guaranteed for $2,106,997 maximum)

2013/14: $22,898,358 (partially guaranteed for $2,289,836 maximum)

2014/15: $24,726,744 (partially guaranteed for $2,472,674 maximum)



The maximum contract that a team could offer to another FA (not it's own FA) - if they had cap space:

2010/11: $11,608,800

2011/12: $12,537,504

2012/13: $13,466,208 (partially guaranteed for $1,346.621 maximum)

2013/14: $14,394,912 (partially guaranteed for $1,439,491 maximum)



These are just the high points of my plan - I am sure there are many more details to be worked out.