When Cleveland owner Dan Gilbert predicted that his Cavaliers would win a championship before The King and his Miami Heat Superfriends in his open letter to LeBron James, the assertion seemed about as foolish as the letter itself. Yet Gilbert's inexplicable confidence in making the statement -- and lack of confidence in the Heat's new star-studded core -- may have stemmed from a scenario that has fast become a hot topic among the league's owners: The notion that the Miami Three of James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh could be down to the Miami Two after just one season. It is, in fact, a possibility. Share With the league's collective bargaining agreement set to expire after next season, the owners are poised to go the way of the NHL and insist on a hard salary cap in the next deal that could be in the neighborhood of $45 million. If they are successful in that attempt -- likely after a lockout like the one endured by the NHL in 2004-05 -- the Heat and a number of other teams could be forced to release key players if their salaries surpassed the cap. James, Wade and Bosh are reportedly scheduled to make a combined $43 million on their own next season with 10 percent annual raises thereafter, potentially meaning a nightmare scenario on South Beach. The Heat would hardly be alone in their despair, as the defending champion Lakers have approximately $80 million in committed salaries for the 2011-12 season and are slated to pay a combined $45 million for Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol alone. http://nba.fanhouse.com/2010/07/11/...-up-after-one-year/?ncid=txtlnkusspor00000002
Let's do it. The NBA would be so much more competitive and smaller markets would have a chance to compete. I think a hard cap around $50-$60M would make more sense.
Being a Laker fan, I should hate this idea, but I love it. I agree it would make the NBA much more competitive and give smaller market teams a much greater shot @ winning.
It seems like the owners are adamant about this. If that's the case, I think all of 2010-11 is doomed much like the NHL a few years ago. I just don't see the players being desperate enough to take such a huge pay cut in the future. If that whole season disappears then the ball is back in the court of the owners, because as terrible as losing one season is they can't afford to let it go on any further than that. I think a lot of compromise is coming, like a much higher hard cap, and certainly no less than this year's soft cap.
i have a hard time seeing this happening. First, 45M x 30 = 1.35B in salaries, max with a hard cap. This year we have 1.8B already, and still have a bit of roster-filling-out to do. You think that the players are going to be cool with dropping 30-35% of their aggregate salary AND guaranteed contracts off the table? If, and I'm pure spitballing here, the league goes to a hard cap, where do all the players go who've been cut? And how do the other teams get those players? Using the Blazers: we'd probably keep Roy and all of our rookie contract guys. If we hear the news and sign Oden to something like a 5M yearly deal, he stays. LMA is gone. Ok so far... but who, then, picks up LMA? There isn't a team in the league (MIN aside) who has room under the 45M cap to sign him. And that's just LMA. What about every L*ker other than K*be or Pau? Or every MIA player aside from the Three? Or CHI? DAL? I think if this was to happen they'd try to get across-the-board cuts....something like "everyone on your team takes a salary cut commensurate with where your team is over the cap to get down to 45M". So if the Blazers, who are at 60M next year were to do this, everyone on the team would have to take 75% of their salary, so Roy's "max" would go from 15M to 11.25M. A team like LAL who's at almost 90M would have to have everyone cut their pay in half, so K*be goes from making 24M to 12M. This way, everyone stays "guaranteed" and keeps their jobs, but the hard cap is instituted. Teams like IND (who are under the cap for next year) could still sign FA's to whatever they wanted up to the hard cap.
I wonder if this is why owners where throwing money at the likes of Drew Gooden, Darko etc. knowing they will only have to pay it for one season? This is an extreme shift by the owners and I can't see it happening. Maybe they can strike a deal to eventually reach the $45M hard cap, but implementing it right away is going to be a mess. I wonder how many players explore options overseas?