Prove Me Wrong - "Non-Guaranteed Contracts and an Age 21 Minimum Would Make the NBA a Better Product"

[Daddy 801]

I have a much different take on the non guaranteed contract situation. I think my solution would be the one of the main things needed to "make the product better" as you said.

I think 50% of revenue for the entire NBA/each team should come down to actual minutes played. If you want players to play hard you have to incentivize them to not take games off.

Spoiler:

So for example. Player X in todays CBA can make 25 million a year guaranteed. In my scenario the max he can make guaranteed is 12.5 million. The other portion of his contract (and all players contracts) are paid out on a per minute basis. So if player X gets hurt in the preseason and plays no minutes he gets his 12.5 million. But if he plays the whole season you take the percentage of minutes he played relative to the amount the whole team plays in a season. So 82*48*5=19680 total minutes for each team. Let's say the cap is 200 million, half of that goes to a per minute basis. So 100 million divided by 19680 is roughly 5,000 dollars a minute. So for each minute a player plays they get 5000 dollars. So if a player averages 32 minutes a game, and doesn't miss a single game, he would make roughly an additional 13 million dollars.

This solves multiple problems IMO. Makes players want to play and keeps superstars from sitting. Stops coaches from being able to tank because their best players are going to bitch if they can't play. And it also gets players who actually go out and perform and our on rookie scale contracts big money if they perform well. While these guys all make absurd money I do "feel bad" for a player signed on a rookie minimum contract who puts it all out on the floor and gives it his all and makes peanuts compared to a guaranteed contract player who is sitting out. Especially if some young guy balls out for a season or two and gets hurt before he can get his first big payday. Players should be paid for past AND current performance.

Guys like PG, Embiid, Dame, etc getting paid tens of millions to not play while some rookie is getting paid a couple million is absurd IMO. Give the people who are actually playing and providing the entertainment 50% of the revenue. I would be even fine with more than 50%. But that's just me.

I think the owners would be fine with this. It will be the players who negotiate for the CBA who won't push for this. Just like our society the older wealthy players have a disproportionate amount of sway/power in their negotiations. So the common player gets screwed while the older superstars would negotiate for fully guaranteed contracts.

So the coach would determine how much players make, by giving or withholding minutes. Not sure what that would do for team chemistry.

Yep. 100%.

Everything has tradeoffs. The tradeoff of the current system is there is no incentive for superstars to not rest, semi hurt or injured players don’t play, in the tank players get fabricated injuries, players can sit out a whole season rehabbing and the guys putting in the works get screwed, etc.

The tradeoff of what I am proposing is players would be mad at their coach for not playing them so coaches would be forced to play their best players regardless of status in the league. Coaches would have leverage to make guys play hard and hold them accountable.

I’ll take my downside all day everyday rather than the current downside.

[Daddy 801]

I have a much different take on the non guaranteed contract situation. I think my solution would be the one of the main things needed to "make the product better" as you said.

I think 50% of revenue for the entire NBA/each team should come down to actual minutes played. If you want players to play hard you have to incentivize them to not take games off.

So for example. Player X in todays CBA can make 25 million a year guaranteed. In my scenario the max he can make guaranteed is 12.5 million. The other portion of his contract (and all players contracts) are paid out on a per minute basis. So if player X gets hurt in the preseason and plays no minutes he gets his 12.5 million. But if he plays the whole season you take the percentage of minutes he played relative to the amount the whole team plays in a season. So 82*48*5=19680 total minutes for each team. Let's say the cap is 200 million, half of that goes to a per minute basis. So 100 million divided by 19680 is roughly 5,000 dollars a minute. So for each minute a player plays they get 5000 dollars. So if a player averages 32 minutes a game, and doesn't miss a single game, he would make roughly an additional 13 million dollars.

This solves multiple problems IMO. Makes players want to play and keeps superstars from sitting. Stops coaches from being able to tank because their best players are going to bitch if they can't play. And it also gets players who actually go out and perform and our on rookie scale contracts big money if they perform well. While these guys all make absurd money I do "feel bad" for a player signed on a rookie minimum contract who puts it all out on the floor and gives it his all and makes peanuts compared to a guaranteed contract player who is sitting out. Especially if some young guy balls out for a season or two and gets hurt before he can get his first big payday. Players should be paid for past AND current performance.

Guys like PG, Embiid, Dame, etc getting paid tens of millions to not play while some rookie is getting paid a couple million is absurd IMO. Give the people who are actually playing and providing the entertainment 50% of the revenue. I would be even fine with more than 50%. But that's just me.

I think the owners would be fine with this. It will be the players who negotiate for the CBA who won't push for this. Just like our society the older wealthy players have a disproportionate amount of sway/power in their negotiations. So the common player gets screwed while the older superstars would negotiate for fully guaranteed contracts.

How does this make sense? Why are they getting paid per minute and not based on performance? What if you play every game but averaged only 10 points? Why do you deserve to get higher pay than Luka who may sustained a major injury and but is averaging 37 points and carrying your team to the playoffs? That is like paying someone for coming to the office rather than what he or she accomplished. Also, what if you don't make the playoffs or play-in? Do you just get less money because there are less games?

Lastly, you realized there would be numerous lawsuits and claims of abuse right? What happens if the coach dislike a player and play him less? He would be asking for a trade immediately. There would be tons of tension. Players would want to play every single minute, rather than taking a break, even if it hurts their performance.

PG, Embiid, and Dame are getting more than some rookie because they are worth more than the rookies. They have a history of performing better and they draw more fans. Why is that unfair?

Why is it unfair?

Well the guys who do the work should be the ones who get paid. Pretty much 99% of jobs you get a raise based on your past performance but you don’t just get to take a year off because of injury. Present performance matters as well. Players who have proved themselves still get 50% guaranteed. So they still get paid.

Your downside of my system is guys will want to play and that will cause friction. Ok, I’ll take that over the downsides of the current system.

[Ssj16]

You are making far too many Generalizations here.
Not all players are grown men "dedicating" their "life" to playing a game.... In fact there are young kids here not necessarily dedicated to the sport, being focused on other things like enjoying themselves outside basketball.
Not all owners are just there just to preserve their generational wealth. If this true, then there's not reason for some of them to sell their team.
Not all owners do NOT care about winning or losing, I really think you are way off base here.
If they really don't care about winning then why oh why would they even bother signing expensive players?
Again, owners take risk and sign talented expensive players because they hope that these assets would actually play and produce to help their team win and it's not easy to just sign them because if they miss 60 games, then fans would stop buying tickets, advertisers would pull out.
If they don't sign expensive players, then fans would ABSOLUTELY stop coming to games and advertisers won sign from game 1 to game to up to 41 home games. Also ZERO playoff games too.
You let your injury prone players walk means your team would have to wait at least 3-5 years hoping you get a couple of young men in the draft who can really help your team win. And please don't tell me those teams can simply get really good free agents every summer.

Most owners don't care about winning or losing, if they did, they would push for no cap, so they can have the ability to build a team with less financial constraints.

They are the ones that dictate the rules.

If I was a multi-billionaire that loved professional basketball and wanted to build the best team possible, I wouldn't want a salary cap. I wouldn't want a draft. I want to hand pick my players.

They don't care.

The entire system is designed to reward losing and lots of it. The entire system is designed to reward penny pinching in the name of parity.

NBA players are not really expensive compared to baseball players. The commit of guaranteed money isn't even that long.

The Dodgers ownership cares about winning because look at how much money they throw at it.

The pervious Celtics ownership cares about winning, they spent so much money, they realized they can't afford the team and sold it.

The Warriors ownership cares about winning and was wealthy to buy their own arena.

The Eagles ownership cares about winning, they spent a lot of money on their team to make it what it is today.

NBA and NFL owners in general are penny pinchers that want to push "parity". MLB owners are turning into penny pinchers too because most of them don't want to spend money to compete with the Dodgers.

As a competitive owner that wants to win, you shouldn't care about parity, parity is for losers. If they can't afford to have a team and to spend the money required to field the best team possible, majority ownership isn't for them.

And yes, if you are a professional athlete, you have dedicated yourself since a kid. It's not something you can pick up and try. And the point is to hit the league and get paid off for the sacrifices you had to make as a child.

And fans shouldn't be up in arms trying to snatch that way because of "the product" and should point to the owners who largely make the rules to save as much money as possible and reduce competition as much as possible.

If you don't want to see draft busts on organizationally mismatched teams, how about get rid of the draft so players can pick where they want to go that best suit their talents?

Nah, the solution is make them in at 21 and after 3 years of college.

If you don't want your team to pay the Bradley Beals and Zach Lavines of the NBA maxed contracts and to be stuck on a mediocre team, that's an argument for eliminating max contracts so the Doncics and Wembys can get paid 500 million and then the Beals and Lavines would get paid 50 to 100 because NBA owners largely don't compete on contracts.

I agree that a lot of the owners are penny pinchers but I don't necessarily think that "no cap" is the solution. All that means is that the richest owners are going to win 8 out of 10 times.

This current generation of rules has forced front offices to build smart and I like the strategy around it. The one stupid rule they have is that you get taxed if you pay home grown talent. You should be able to pay home grown guys without going into the tax and if they weren't drafted by you but they developed on your team (e.g. SGA) you should their should also be tax relief as well.

I think it's preposterous that if you've built your team the right way like Denver/Boston/OKC that you need to make concessions and break up the core because you need to pay the stars that you developed in the first place.

[Doctor MJ]

The issue is injuries. Guys shouldn't get cut just because they got hurt. If they're going to sacrifice their bodies to win basketball games, they need long term security.

And I don't see much need for a 21-year-old minimum. I think the one-and-done rule is good because it allows talent evaluators a real shot at getting it right in the draft, but beyond that, there's no real need for good 19 and 20 year-olds to play in college if they are ready for the pros. They will develop more at the NBA level where there is more training staff and more practice time. In college, they are limited in the amount of time they can even spend in practice because they are allegedly "student athletes".

Perhaps a 21-year-old minimum would work if the NBA had a more robust minor league system like baseball, but they don't.

How does the logic apply to basketball, but not football, a sport where you’re more likely to get hurt? I mean, the NFL works fine with players sacrificing their bodies to win football games. Literally more so than basketball, throwing their bodies into opponents bodies.

Jumping back into the thread this caught my eye.

Let’s be clear: In league’s with guaranteed contracts, that was the result of a player union victory, while the absence comes not from the player union in that sport (football) not wanting guaranteed contracts but about lost negotiations in the past.

From a league quality perspective non-guarantee is the way to go so long as no one else can poach those players.

From a player perspective, the possibility of having your entire future livelihood immediately rescinded at the moment when you’ve just been physically crippled is brutal.

I frankly have moral feelings about doing this to an athlete, but I’d emphasize that morality had nothing to do with how things came to be.


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[Effigy]

I don’t see how raising the age limit helps the nba at all. Before the league required the 1 year of college in 2005, most of the best players at the time were high school guys. KG, Kobe, LeBron, TMac, Dwight, Amare, Jermaine, etc

[threethehardway]

I agree that a lot of the owners are penny pinchers but I don't necessarily think that "no cap" is the solution. All that means is that the richest owners are going to win 8 out of 10 times.

This current generation of rules has forced front offices to build smart and I like the strategy around it. The one stupid rule they have is that you get taxed if you pay home grown talent. You should be able to pay home grown guys without going into the tax and if they weren't drafted by you but they developed on your team (e.g. SGA) you should their should also be tax relief as well.

I think it's preposterous that if you've built your team the right way like Denver/Boston/OKC that you need to make concessions and break up the core because you need to pay the stars that you developed in the first place.

The richest and the smartest organizations would win 8 out of 10 times.

The point is, the owners don't have infinite money and not all organizations are going to be equal in quality.

The truth is, nobody wants to play for the Pelicans because they are a crappy organization. Nobody wanted to play for the Clippers before the new ownership.

Organization matters.

With the draft, bird rights, and the max contracts, organization doesn't matter to young players. Coaching really doesn't really matter to young players.

Only thing that matters is getting to the max contract and signing for 100+ million and figure out the rest of their career later. Most players are not LeBron or Doncic or Wemby or KD, so legacy doesn't matter. It's about money.

If there's no draft, no max contracts, no bird rights, young players would have to consider more things than "getting to the max contract" and location. And players would properly be evaluated based on contribution to winning instead of "do I have a max slot to offer?"

Sports should be about dominating the competition, not parity. It should be an arena where the richest people in the world and the best athletes in the world compete at all levels of competition. That's what the Dodgers are doing and it's beautiful to watch.

It shouldn't be about parity, age limits, max contracts and all this other pointless crap. All of that is cost control to inflate the value of teams based on TV contracts and revenue. American Sports is the only arena in life, where you can be a total loser for the entirety of your existence and your value goes up because of 5 franchises that win regularly.

Give a Lebron talent 600 million for 10 years at the age of 25 and try to run the tables. You should be able to structure contracts however you want to.

I don't care if only 10 other teams can compete, that's how it should be. If you cannot compete, no different than the players, owners should be forced out. If players are forced out the league because they aren't good enough to play at the NBA level, owners should be forced out because they are too damn broke. They are at the 200th on the Forbes list, not 50th.

American sports is the only arena where we expect to prevent the full force of competition for the well being of the whole.

"My Minnesota Timberwolves shouldn't have to compete on price with the Warriors and Lakers."

Then your team should be sold to someone richer. I am sorry. I liked the KD Warriors, it was the best basketball ever and I was a major fan of the We Believe Warriors. KD Warriors was a team without any fatal flaws.

I don't want to see a team of no names try hard. I don't want to see a superstar and a bunch of no names. I want to see KD, Steph, Draymond and Klay, on the same squad running the tables and showing what elite professional NBA basketball should be.

Sports should be about creating the ideal team. Not one guy carrying teammates that aren't even in his stratosphere. They don't breathe the same air, they don't bleed the same, but on the same team. That's a waste of talent.

I don't understand the parochialism of professional sports, this isn't the amateurs. I don't care if the team is homegrown or not, it makes no difference to me, I care if the team is unique, elite and historic.

[homecourtloss]

I don't want to hurt any player financially nor do I want to enrich billionaire owners, so if you're man enough to decompartmentalize these two things, please do. Please try your best to put those two factors off to the side, and focus solely on this question:

"Would having non-guaranteed contracts and a minimum age requirement of 21 (or three years removed from high school) make the NBA a better product?"

I say yes.

Why? Because the players will be more mature, the college game would explode in popularity and those fans will follow to the NBA, players will play harder if they can be cut, players won't take-off games, and team executives will have more flexibility to build great teams not being hamstrung by bad contracts.

When looking only at improving the product, would these changes work?

how is someone going to prove a hypothetical that's not a falsifiable statement?

[SomeBunghole]

Pretty much 99% of jobs you get a raise based on your past performance but you don’t just get to take a year off because of injury.

Maybe in the capitalist nightmare dystopia that is the US you don't get sick leave, but in first-world countries, you do. My wife has missed about 3 years of work with severe PTSD(social worker) since 2018 and she has gotten paid.

[Daddy 801]

I have a much different take on the non guaranteed contract situation. I think my solution would be the one of the main things needed to "make the product better" as you said.

I think 50% of revenue for the entire NBA/each team should come down to actual minutes played. If you want players to play hard you have to incentivize them to not take games off.

Spoiler:

So for example. Player X in todays CBA can make 25 million a year guaranteed. In my scenario the max he can make guaranteed is 12.5 million. The other portion of his contract (and all players contracts) are paid out on a per minute basis. So if player X gets hurt in the preseason and plays no minutes he gets his 12.5 million. But if he plays the whole season you take the percentage of minutes he played relative to the amount the whole team plays in a season. So 82*48*5=19680 total minutes for each team. Let's say the cap is 200 million, half of that goes to a per minute basis. So 100 million divided by 19680 is roughly 5,000 dollars a minute. So for each minute a player plays they get 5000 dollars. So if a player averages 32 minutes a game, and doesn't miss a single game, he would make roughly an additional 13 million dollars.

This solves multiple problems IMO. Makes players want to play and keeps superstars from sitting. Stops coaches from being able to tank because their best players are going to bitch if they can't play. And it also gets players who actually go out and perform and our on rookie scale contracts big money if they perform well. While these guys all make absurd money I do "feel bad" for a player signed on a rookie minimum contract who puts it all out on the floor and gives it his all and makes peanuts compared to a guaranteed contract player who is sitting out. Especially if some young guy balls out for a season or two and gets hurt before he can get his first big payday. Players should be paid for past AND current performance.

Guys like PG, Embiid, Dame, etc getting paid tens of millions to not play while some rookie is getting paid a couple million is absurd IMO. Give the people who are actually playing and providing the entertainment 50% of the revenue. I would be even fine with more than 50%. But that's just me.

I think the owners would be fine with this. It will be the players who negotiate for the CBA who won't push for this. Just like our society the older wealthy players have a disproportionate amount of sway/power in their negotiations. So the common player gets screwed while the older superstars would negotiate for fully guaranteed contracts.

So the coach would determine how much players make, by giving or withholding minutes. Not sure what that would do for team chemistry.

Yes, and that’s a wonderful thing. Play hard, get back on defense, make the right play, etc. Good players get rewarded. Players who are listening to the coach and behaving well get rewarded. Whiny superstar babies who are pouting because they aren’t getting along with their coach get impacted the only way they care….money. Players who don’t take the off season seriously and get fat…get penalized.

And it’s not like they make no money if they don’t play, they make 50% of their contract guaranteed.

And the babies who throw a fit and try to harm the locker room aren’t just going against the coach. They are going against the other players who are being rewarded. There would be a self correcting mechanism by the players not allowing that type of thing.

People’s criticism of this is exactly why we need something like this. Players are entitled. Fully guaranteed contracts are a problem. The players who play all games and actually create the product we are watching should be rewarded whether they are on a rookie scale contract or a max contract.

[SkyHook]

I have a much different take on the non guaranteed contract situation. I think my solution would be the one of the main things needed to "make the product better" as you said.

I think 50% of revenue for the entire NBA/each team should come down to actual minutes played. If you want players to play hard you have to incentivize them to not take games off.

Spoiler:

So for example. Player X in todays CBA can make 25 million a year guaranteed. In my scenario the max he can make guaranteed is 12.5 million. The other portion of his contract (and all players contracts) are paid out on a per minute basis. So if player X gets hurt in the preseason and plays no minutes he gets his 12.5 million. But if he plays the whole season you take the percentage of minutes he played relative to the amount the whole team plays in a season. So 82*48*5=19680 total minutes for each team. Let's say the cap is 200 million, half of that goes to a per minute basis. So 100 million divided by 19680 is roughly 5,000 dollars a minute. So for each minute a player plays they get 5000 dollars. So if a player averages 32 minutes a game, and doesn't miss a single game, he would make roughly an additional 13 million dollars.

This solves multiple problems IMO. Makes players want to play and keeps superstars from sitting. Stops coaches from being able to tank because their best players are going to bitch if they can't play. And it also gets players who actually go out and perform and our on rookie scale contracts big money if they perform well. While these guys all make absurd money I do "feel bad" for a player signed on a rookie minimum contract who puts it all out on the floor and gives it his all and makes peanuts compared to a guaranteed contract player who is sitting out. Especially if some young guy balls out for a season or two and gets hurt before he can get his first big payday. Players should be paid for past AND current performance.

Guys like PG, Embiid, Dame, etc getting paid tens of millions to not play while some rookie is getting paid a couple million is absurd IMO. Give the people who are actually playing and providing the entertainment 50% of the revenue. I would be even fine with more than 50%. But that's just me.

I think the owners would be fine with this. It will be the players who negotiate for the CBA who won't push for this. Just like our society the older wealthy players have a disproportionate amount of sway/power in their negotiations. So the common player gets screwed while the older superstars would negotiate for fully guaranteed contracts.

So the coach would determine how much players make, by giving or withholding minutes. Not sure what that would do for team chemistry.

Yes, and that’s a wonderful thing. Play hard, get back on defense, make the right play, etc. Good players get rewarded. Players who are listening to the coach and behaving well get rewarded. Whiny superstar babies who are pouting because they aren’t getting along with their coach get impacted the only way they care….money. Players who don’t take the off season seriously and get fat…get penalized.

And it’s not like they make no money if they don’t play, they make 50% of their contract guaranteed.

And the babies who throw a fit and try to harm the locker room aren’t just going against the coach. They are going against the other players who are being rewarded. There would be a self correcting mechanism by the players not allowing that type of thing.

People’s criticism of this is exactly why we need something like this. Players are entitled. Fully guaranteed contracts are a problem. The players who play all games and actually create the product we are watching should be rewarded whether they are on a rookie scale contract or a max contract.

Do the union and the collective bargaining agreement magically no longer exist in this scenario?

[7seventynine9]

There's no reason to make it over 21. There are already enough roster spots on a team where carrying young guys to develop them isn't an issue. Unless you want to see a bunch of guys going nowhere in garbage time, I think it may hurt the game. At least when your team is down 110-82, you can watch that 19 year old kid with potential. Now, you'd be watching some scrub with no real future.

[tamaraw08]

You are making far too many Generalizations here.
Not all players are grown men "dedicating" their "life" to playing a game.... In fact there are young kids here not necessarily dedicated to the sport, being focused on other things like enjoying themselves outside basketball.
Not all owners are just there just to preserve their generational wealth. If this true, then there's not reason for some of them to sell their team.
Not all owners do NOT care about winning or losing, I really think you are way off base here.
If they really don't care about winning then why oh why would they even bother signing expensive players?
Again, owners take risk and sign talented expensive players because they hope that these assets would actually play and produce to help their team win and it's not easy to just sign them because if they miss 60 games, then fans would stop buying tickets, advertisers would pull out.
If they don't sign expensive players, then fans would ABSOLUTELY stop coming to games and advertisers won sign from game 1 to game to up to 41 home games. Also ZERO playoff games too.
You let your injury prone players walk means your team would have to wait at least 3-5 years hoping you get a couple of young men in the draft who can really help your team win. And please don't tell me those teams can simply get really good free agents every summer.

Most owners don't care about winning or losing, if they did, they would push for no cap, so they can have the ability to build a team with less financial constraints.

They are the ones that dictate the rules.

If I was a multi-billionaire that loved professional basketball and wanted to build the best team possible, I wouldn't want a salary cap. I wouldn't want a draft. I want to hand pick my players.

They don't care.

The entire system is designed to reward losing and lots of it. The entire system is designed to reward penny pinching in the name of parity.

NBA players are not really expensive compared to baseball players. The commit of guaranteed money isn't even that long.

The Dodgers ownership cares about winning because look at how much money they throw at it.

The pervious Celtics ownership cares about winning, they spent so much money, they realized they can't afford the team and sold it.

The Warriors ownership cares about winning and was wealthy to buy their own arena.

The Eagles ownership cares about winning, they spent a lot of money on their team to make it what it is today.

NBA and NFL owners in general are penny pinchers that want to push "parity". MLB owners are turning into penny pinchers too because most of them don't want to spend money to compete with the Dodgers.

As a competitive owner that wants to win, you shouldn't care about parity, parity is for losers. If they can't afford to have a team and to spend the money required to field the best team possible, majority ownership isn't for them.

And yes, if you are a professional athlete, you have dedicated yourself since a kid. It's not something you can pick up and try. And the point is to hit the league and get paid off for the sacrifices you had to make as a child.

And fans shouldn't be up in arms trying to snatch that way because of "the product" and should point to the owners who largely make the rules to save as much money as possible and reduce competition as much as possible.

If you don't want to see draft busts on organizationally mismatched teams, how about get rid of the draft so players can pick where they want to go that best suit their talents?

Nah, the solution is make them in at 21 and after 3 years of college.

If you don't want your team to pay the Bradley Beals and Zach Lavines of the NBA maxed contracts and to be stuck on a mediocre team, that's an argument for eliminating max contracts so the Doncics and Wembys can get paid 500 million and then the Beals and Lavines would get paid 50 to 100 because NBA owners largely don't compete on contracts.

I agree that a lot of the owners are penny pinchers but I don't necessarily think that "no cap" is the solution. All that means is that the richest owners are going to win 8 out of 10 times.

This current generation of rules has forced front offices to build smart and I like the strategy around it. The one stupid rule they have is that you get taxed if you pay home grown talent. You should be able to pay home grown guys without going into the tax and if they weren't drafted by you but they developed on your team (e.g. SGA) you should their should also be tax relief as well.

I think it's preposterous that if you've built your team the right way like Denver/Boston/OKC that you need to make concessions and break up the core because you need to pay the stars that you developed in the first place.

The entire system is designed to reward losing and lots of it. The entire system is designed to reward penny pinching in the name of parity.

NBA players are not really expensive compared to baseball players. The commit of guaranteed money isn't even that long.

Baseball teams play 164 RS games and seat as many as 50 K compared to 82 games and seat 18-20K and yet 13 baseball teams have lower payroll than the NBA team with the lowest payroll in the league.
Per Spotrac, 28 of the 30 total teams are over the salary cap. If the majority of the owners have zero interest about winning, then it would make PERFECT sense not to go over that cap and yet 93.3% of them made the conscious decision to go over it, why?
I think it's silly to assume that there are more than 28 other billionaires that are as rich as Steve Ballmer who don't care about over spending. Just because you want to win doesn't mean you should throw caution to the wind and simply over spend for the heck of it.
Of course they are also look at the books and would be concerned if the overhead cost esp their payroll is overwhelming.
Look at the ticket prices from espn schedule on Monday
Per ESPN schedule, you can get in as low as $11 at Cleveland and currently they have a 232 mil in payroll which is costlier than 23 baseball teams.
So for me, it's not that majority of the owners don't care about winning but it's a case of wanting to compete but majority of them do not have the wherewithal to match the spending powers of other owners.
Now if there are non guaranteed contracts, in theory, owners should be able to use that saved money to go after free agents inythe future summers. Bad owners spending below the salary floor should be punished though.

[axeman23]

Or talent evaluators could just be better at their job, just saying...

[Godymas]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_high_school_draftees

Kevin Garnett
Kobe Bryant
Jermaine O'Neal
Tracy McGrady
Al Harrington
Rashard Lewis
Tyson Chandler
Amare Stoudemire
LeBron James
Kendrick Perkins
Dwight Howard
Shaun Livingston
Al Jefferson
Josh Smith
JR Smith
Andrew Bynum
Gerald Green
Monta Ellis
Lou Will

That's 19 of 41 guys that have been drafted out of high school. You could add 5 or so more role players to that list. More than half of all the guys drafted out of high school have panned out.

The obsession with collegiate sports in America is legitimately one of the stupidest things I have encountered. Every single year, the guys that are going to the pros just wreck the guys that will never do so, even if they are playing seniors and the future pros are freshman. Some guys benefit from college, but a lot of guys who are NBA level prospects really don't need to go to college.

[axeman23]

1. Non guaranteed contracts being standard/mandatory is never going to happen. Teams can already give them out of they want to.

2. Cooper flagg turns 21 in his 3rd year. Why should a guy like that waste 3 years of his life that he could be playing in the nba?

Because it builds anticipation while better preparing him before he arrives in the NBA.

No it doesn't. The college game is not the NBA game. Also, why the heck would I care as a NBA fan that it build anticipation? I don't want anticipation, I want the product.

Also, why risk injury? What if Flagg got injured in college? Would he still be the number #1 pick? That is dumb risk proposition for the player.

If you want hype, let players go directly into the NBA after high school again. The most hyped prospects are the ones that came from high school directly.

Waiter: "Good evening, sir. Could I interest you in some dessert?"

Diner: "Sure, why not?"

Waiter: Unfortunately our dessert chef doesn't arrive for another 2 hours, but here's some pics of their specialties for you to look at while you wait..."

[Duke4life831]

Ill repeat basically the thing Ive been saying since I joined this site.

I do think bumping the age to at least 20 would definitely benefit the league overall. With that said, I would also lower the draft age. And from there decide to develop them with your G League team or on a college team until they reach NBA play age. Now with NIL being as big as it is now (reports that Flagg got paid 10+ mil last year), this wouldnt be viewed as negatively before NIL days.

Do I think non-guaranteed contracts would make the league better as a fan? Ya. Do I think it would ever be a possible scenario for this league? Haha not a chance. The player union will never give that up

[bovice]

Players would have a lockout and college players would sue.

no1's watching anyway so why not try it if im an owner

[Special_Puppy]

Players would have a lockout and college players would sue.

no1's watching anyway so why not try it if im an owner

What do they got to lose? Disrupting a $12-14 billion business

[Daddy 801]

So the coach would determine how much players make, by giving or withholding minutes. Not sure what that would do for team chemistry.

Yes, and that’s a wonderful thing. Play hard, get back on defense, make the right play, etc. Good players get rewarded. Players who are listening to the coach and behaving well get rewarded. Whiny superstar babies who are pouting because they aren’t getting along with their coach get impacted the only way they care….money. Players who don’t take the off season seriously and get fat…get penalized.

And it’s not like they make no money if they don’t play, they make 50% of their contract guaranteed.

And the babies who throw a fit and try to harm the locker room aren’t just going against the coach. They are going against the other players who are being rewarded. There would be a self correcting mechanism by the players not allowing that type of thing.

People’s criticism of this is exactly why we need something like this. Players are entitled. Fully guaranteed contracts are a problem. The players who play all games and actually create the product we are watching should be rewarded whether they are on a rookie scale contract or a max contract.

Do the union and the collective bargaining agreement magically no longer exist in this scenario?

It is my fix in a perfect world where the union actually cares about the majority of their players and is bargained into the new CBA. I don’t think owners would have any real objection. In fact if I was an owner I would be pushing for this. It’s in the best interest of the league to have star players play and a better product, which this would ensure.

It’s the players who will object.

So is this going to happen? No. Because the older, wealthier, and powerful players are the ones who control the Union (usually) and they aren’t going to like this deal because the majority of money that players miss out on would be injured star players on fully guaranteed contracts. And those guys want to make sure they get their full 40+ million dollar salaries that they shouldn’t be getting in seasons they have to rehab. But the majority of players in the nba would benefit and so would the fans.

[Daddy 801]

Ill repeat basically the thing Ive been saying since I joined this site.

I do think bumping the age to at least 20 would definitely benefit the league overall. With that said, I would also lower the draft age. And from there decide to develop them with your G League team or on a college team until they reach NBA play age. Now with NIL being as big as it is now (reports that Flagg got paid 10+ mil last year), this wouldnt be viewed as negatively before NIL days.

Do I think non-guaranteed contracts would make the league better as a fan? Ya. Do I think it would ever be a possible scenario for this league? Haha not a chance. The player union will never give that up

I could be down to getting rid of having younger players if a team could draft younger players and they stay in college. Hell, I’d be fine even if teams had to pay a minimum $500,000 or whatever while they were in college if it meant the player had to stay another year or so. Something along those lines wouldn’t bug me.

But what I am not convinced is a player gets better training and coaching by staying in college. I would 100% want a player I drafted on my g league team.

The real solution is getting rid of the draft. But that’s a conversation for another day.