New York Knicks Fan Page

I'm not going to run through what-if scenarios about how the league might be more interesting if Durant hadn't gone to GS and Lebron hadn't gone to Miami in 2010. But to me all of the obvious free-market arguments about efficiency apply. When bad teams can't offer more money to good players than good teams can they're never going to get good players and they're forced to sign trash-contracts with runner-up players and will be stuck in mediocrity indefinitely. I think in a few years we'll see owners like Cuban that got repeatedly snubbed by 1A agents and signed mediocre players to max albatross contracts because they had no other choice start to make noise. The league would become more equitable and the owners/fans would be happier.

The obvious problem to me is the players association: there are more players getting max contracts that don't "deserve" them than there are Lebrons and KDs that are getting half of what they would get on the open market.

Who is forcing teams to sign average players to huge contracts? Considering everyone is under the same salary cap, the same rules apply to all. Overpaying for a mediocre player will bite that team in the ass, doesnt mean other teams were thinking of signing that same player for that value.

When there is a big market team like the Celtics that are doing it all the "right way" I dont see how this is an argument.

Golden State sucked forever until recently and thats cause they built through the draft. The Spurs built a dynasty under this system and are not a huge market team. Mind you we are Knick fans. How well has being a big market done for this franchise? The reason why KD went to the Warriors isnt about money. If Curry and Klay werent there, KD wouldnt have considered GS.

Same with the Cavs. You get Bron and now everyone is signing up to play there for dirt. Cavs are definitely not a big market either.

If you do eliminate max contracts then what? Knicks waste the entire cap on one guy? 20 year guaranteed deals?

At the end of the day yes the players association have more power than ever, but yet max deals have been shortened from 7 to 5 years due to Allan Houston and Grant HIll type scenarios. But no you dont have to sign a mid level guy for the max. If teams stopped doing that then guys would go for their fair market value. If GMs wanna be dumb, let them ruin their franchise. Ill have no sympathy as a Knick fan.

What Im thinking now is that big market means nothing. Its about the value of your franchise. Who you have already on your team, your coaching staff etc. When it comes down to it, free agents will come if your team looks promising. If you are a GM and you think you gotta overpay a mid level player to build buzz, you are GMing wrong. Build through the draft, then watch what happens. If Boston lands a big name one of these summers, its not the allure of Boston, its the young talent, stockpiled draft picks, good coaching and GMing.

Just look around the league and look who is doing well, its almost entirely teams that built through the draft. Even the Bucks look like a decent destination now cause of Giannis and Jabari. The Wiz and John Wall, Spurs and Kawhi....etc etc etc. When we look at the Miami "big three" would they have considered Miami if Wade wasnt already part of that franchise?

No.

Koopa Troopa wrote:Who is forcing teams to sign average players to huge contracts? Considering everyone is under the same salary cap, the same rules apply to all. Overpaying for a mediocre player will bite that team in the ass, doesnt mean other teams were thinking of signing that same player for that value.

When there is a big market team like the Celtics that are doing it all the "right way" I dont see how this is an argument.

Golden State sucked forever until recently and thats cause they built through the draft. The Spurs built a dynasty under this system and are not a huge market team. Mind you we are Knick fans. How well has being a big market done for this franchise? The reason why KD went to the Warriors isnt about money. If Curry and Klay werent there, KD wouldnt have considered GS.

Same with the Cavs. You get Bron and now everyone is signing up to play there for dirt. Cavs are definitely not a big market either.

If you do eliminate max contracts then what? Knicks waste the entire cap on one guy? 20 year guaranteed deals?

At the end of the day yes the players association have more power than ever, but yet max deals have been shortened from 7 to 5 years due to Allan Houston and Grant HIll type scenarios. But no you dont have to sign a mid level guy for the max. If teams stopped doing that then guys would go for their fair market value. If GMs wanna be dumb, let them ruin their franchise. Ill have no sympathy as a Knick fan.

What Im thinking now is that big market means nothing. Its about the value of your franchise. Who you have already on your team, your coaching staff etc. When it comes down to it, free agents will come if your team looks promising. If you are a GM and you think you gotta overpay a mid level player to build buzz, you are GMing wrong. Build through the draft, then watch what happens. If Boston lands a big name one of these summers, its not the allure of Boston, its the young talent, stockpiled draft picks, good coaching and GMing.

Just look around the league and look who is doing well, its almost entirely teams that built through the draft. Even the Bucks look like a decent destination now cause of Giannis and Jabari. The Wiz and John Wall, Spurs and Kawhi....etc etc etc. When we look at the Miami "big three" would they have considered Miami if Wade wasnt already part of that franchise?

All the teams that you cited as doing well have benefitted from getting the cream of the crop of max players. Al Horford and Aldridge both went to established winning teams that offered max dollars when other teams had more cap space and weren't able to offer them more because of the CBA. It's always going to be a good teams get better system. Hell even Moose had multiple max offers by some accounts.

Who is signing for dirt cheap to play with Lebron? Maybe Richard Jefferson took a little paycut after making a few hundred million for his career?

GMs still have a job to do and some will make bad decisions no matter the CBA, no-one is arguing that. But as things stand now the decisions that the GMs of bad teams have (when they have cap space) is to offer a really good player a max deal or not. What decisions does the GM of a bad team have now? Offer a legit max player a max deal (a non-decision because they get turned down) so then either offer a marginal-max player a max contract or move forward with cap space so the same thing can happen next year? What's wrong with a small market team offering Durant a $40 million deal if that's going to get them more wins than signing two guys that aren't really going to move the needle?

But the whole thing is kind of speaking in hyperbole, what is the argument for max contracts?

spree#8 wrote:No.

No more explanation worth giving? Are you some kind of communist?

Well idk about none but I can see the benefit of limiting it to 1. If every single team could only give one single max deal perhaps players would still team up but I think guys would spread out cuz if they wanna get paid that amount theyd all have to find a team thatll give it to them and then everyone else would fall under that.

What decisions does the GM of a bad team have now?

How about build through the draft and make your team desirable. Like I said the Warriors never got any good free agents until they drafted Curry Klay and Green. They didnt buy Curry, Klay and Green, they had a long term plan, drafted amazingly, and now are reaping the benefits of adding a superstar. The Warriors were A BAD TEAM. Even when they first got Curry, they were a lottery team. They didnt spend money on a shitty free agent like you are assuming a bad team will do. They were patient kept their money flexible and kept on drafting stars.

spree#8 wrote:No.

n8 the gr8 wrote:No more explanation worth giving? Are you some kind of communist?

I was/am a bit short on time, but the soft cap system with minimum and maximum contracts is the best sports system out there. You just have to look at European soccer to see, that a league system without a salary cap for teams and players leads to very few teams staying on top forever. So a free market where contracts doesn't mean shit anymore because the best and wealthiest teams can always outbid anyone else is just so bad for sports and becomes boring. Very boring. At times unwatchable. The NBA has the best system of all leagues, because with the soft cap it encourages teams to build from within (allowing you to go over the cap for your own players) and makes it harder to make good offers for other team's free agents. Durant joining the Warriors isn't a problem of the system, it is an anomaly because of the spike of the cap in light of the new TV contract.

I haven't read the new CBA yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if the owners put countermeasures against such spikes in the new agreement. LeBron and Bosh joining Wade in Miami was only possible because the players made it known that they wanted to play together and Riley was willing to gut his whole team other than Wade to get those three together. That was only possible, because he was planning to have basically the whole cap available in 2010 three years earlier. So it was a great strategy working, not a system fault.

Maybe I go into more detail another time, but I hope you get the idea.

Oh, I'm an economist, so, no, I'm not a communist. Lol. I just believe that sports is not something you should play only with free market rules. BTW: if you go back to being a kid, how did you guys put teams together on the playground? More often than not, we drafted teams. So as kids we already knew that sports is the most fun if two teams are able to compete with each other more often than not. A cap system has that thought in it a bit...

I used to selfishly want them to get rid of max contracts, because i'm a fan of a team with an infinite budget... but i'm with the naysayers in reality.

The ONE big thing I hate in the NBA is the guaranteed contract. If you sign a player and he sucks, you should be able to cut him and move on. Let the player get paid until he finds a new team so that the players union doesn't riot, but remove his salary from that team's cap immediately. Put in a rule that says that the releasing team cannot resign the player until the end of the original contract. This way, players can't just get cut so their friends can join, and then come back on a cheaper deal 2 days later.

I don't see any downside of doing this from a players perspective or a team's perspective. It'll strengthen the free agent pool and it will force better team play out of guys.

Guaranteed contracts are a necessity in a soft cap system. What many - especially European soccer guys - don't understand is, that for a soft cap system to work the way it is supposed to be, you want good teams (that ideally have build from within) to be OVER the cap, so they can't make moves for other teams' best free agents. It is a mechanism to a) hinder free agency in general to create more stability and b) to prevent the "rich" teams from getting richer. What happens if the best teams can get after other teams' best free agents are more Durant situations.

So if you give teams the flexibility of unguaranteed contracts, they can always maneuver as they want and can always create the necessary cap room to go after a Durant - so it goes against the very intention of the system. If you don't want unguaranteed contracts, you have to go with a hard cap. I personally like the soft cap system the best, because it doesn't force you to cut a player just because you developed one of your own guys and want/have to give him a pay raise.

spree#8 wrote:Guaranteed contracts are a necessity in a soft cap system. What many - especially European soccer guys - don't understand is, that for a soft cap system to work the way it is supposed to be, you want good teams (that ideally have build from within) to be OVER the cap, so they can't make moves for other teams' best free agents. It is a mechanism to a) hinder free agency in general to create more stability and b) to prevent the "rich" teams from getting richer. What happens if the best teams can get after other teams' best free agents are more Durant situations.

So if you give teams the flexibility of unguaranteed contracts, they can always maneuver as they want and can always create the necessary cap room to go after a Durant - so it goes against the very intention of the system. If you don't want unguaranteed contracts, you have to go with a hard cap. I personally like the soft cap system the best, because it doesn't force you to cut a player just because you developed one of your own guys and want/have to give him a pay raise.

yeah spree, but good teams can always get to those durant situations because good players are always tradeable. If you want someone else's player and youre not a shitty team, you can always do it. You trade Wiggins and then you have Love. Think back to 2010. Walsh spent years trying to open up cap room on the Knicks because we had eddy fucking curry's contract to get rid of. Then we were plagued by Amare's contract. Now it's Noah. Yeah, i mean the answer is to not be stupid in the first place, but as long as there's a cap in place and players want as much money as they can get, you'll maintain parity.

You guys all make good points but it's not really refuting what I'm imagining, I guess I did a poor job explaining it. I'm proposing a very similar CBA to what currently exists, just without max contracts. Personally I like having a soft cap with bird rights/vet min and exceptions. I'm proposing that you allow teams that are under the cap to offer the amount that they are under the cap as they want. Unless I misunderstood how it works I don't think this is how baseball or soccer work.

Oh, I'm an economist, so, no, I'm not a communist. Lol. I just believe that sports is not something you should play only with free market rules. BTW: if you go back to being a kid, how did you guys put teams together on the playground? More often than not, we drafted teams. So as kids we already knew that sports is the most fun if two teams are able to compete with each other more often than not. A cap system has that thought in it a bit...

I was only giving you a hard time about that bit.

The ONE big thing I hate in the NBA is the guaranteed contract. If you sign a player and he sucks, you should be able to cut him and move on. Let the player get paid until he finds a new team so that the players union doesn't riot, but remove his salary from that team's cap immediately. Put in a rule that says that the releasing team cannot resign the player until the end of the original contract. This way, players can't just get cut so their friends can join, and then come back on a cheaper deal 2 days later.

I don't see any downside of doing this from a players perspective or a team's perspective. It'll strengthen the free agent pool and it will force better team play out of guys.

I'm not opposed to this, but it could definitely be in the realm of giving big market teams a bigger advantage than small-market teams. Is that how the NFL works? Is there anything to discourage cutting a player other than paying them without them playing?

spree#8 wrote: Oh, I'm an economist, so, no, I'm not a communist. Lol. I just believe that sports is not something you should play only with free market rules. BTW: if you go back to being a kid, how did you guys put teams together on the playground? More often than not, we drafted teams. So as kids we already knew that sports is the most fun if two teams are able to compete with each other more often than not. A cap system has that thought in it a bit...

I got an econ degree, get me a job!