Aloha,
In its effort to protect small market teams from losing their stars, the have created a monster. Damien Lillard has signed an extension for 61 mil a year. That’s half of the salary cap. Lillard is a great player but how do you build a championship level team with half of your cap going to one guy. How can a small market team compete if half their cap is going to one player. It really has gotten out of hand but I don’t know how it’s resolved. The NBA is now controlled by a handful of superstars. What is puzzling to me is why the rank and file members of the union put up with it. They hold the votes yet they allow themselves to get the shaft.
I’ve posed this question multiple times. 20-30 guys getting all the money and perks, while the remaining 420-30 get the shaft. The only thing I come back to is that if max salaries were limited to something tenable, and the rank and file able to get more for themselves, then the stars would all pack their bags and join up in desirable markets. AKA – it’s anti-Lakers policy. Plain and simple. They’d rather be forced to overpay to keep their guys than to see max deals amount to say only 20-25% of the cap so the top tier guys can all join up in big, cosmopolitan cities.
I think one thing to temper this down is to limit the teams to one of each max slot. Only the team you signed your first NBA deal with can give you at 30% max deal. Then you have one 25% slot, one 20% slot, and 3 15% slots. They can’t outpace the cap growth, so raises may not be the full 7-12% if the cap doesn’t grow accordingly. Let’s see guys flee small markets or demand trades if they can’t keep their bloated salaries in the process, am I right?
It’s almost as if these things weren’t collectively bargained and voted in by both sides. Maybe Lebron rigged the election….Stop The Steal!!!!!
LOL!
I think that there are enough mechanisms in place that allow all teams to compete. We’re seeing the largest market team choosing not to spend, we just saw Memphis blast past the cap to keep most of that core together. The Warriors function as if money didn’t matter and to the owner it probably doesn’t. The real issue I have is players not coming close to honoring contracts. Dame Time asks out next summer and the Blazers will be forced to move him for a lesser return, exactly what we’re seeing Brooklyn deal with for the last year. Stars almready are choosing to leave any market they’re in, the contract isn’t much better than the single ply apocalypse TP folks stockpiled.