Whats really happening in regards to Samuel Dalembert ?
- Thread starter Sac.1989
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I agree completely. Instituting a reasonable hard cap (45 million is not reasonable) along with a wider distribution of revenue will put teams on an equal financial footing. But that's where the equality stops.
From there, it depends on a team's management to find the correct balance between heavy hitting stars and complimentary players within the new system. That will mean signing smart, favorable contracts and continually supplementing those with good, young players who come cheap. We all know that teams are definitely not on an equal footing in this respect.
Team management quality varies so much across the league (KAHNNNN!) that you'll quickly see those who are smart financially and are adept at scouting out new talent will be rewarded with success in the league. Rich teams shouldn't be able to just buy their way out of futility anymore. We need to rid ourselves of the backwards Red Sox/Yankees superteam mentality and make things a little more interesting around here.
From there, it depends on a team's management to find the correct balance between heavy hitting stars and complimentary players within the new system. That will mean signing smart, favorable contracts and continually supplementing those with good, young players who come cheap. We all know that teams are definitely not on an equal footing in this respect.
Team management quality varies so much across the league (KAHNNNN!) that you'll quickly see those who are smart financially and are adept at scouting out new talent will be rewarded with success in the league. Rich teams shouldn't be able to just buy their way out of futility anymore. We need to rid ourselves of the backwards Red Sox/Yankees superteam mentality and make things a little more interesting around here.
That’s a disingenuous question. It’s based on an unsupportable premise that The Kings will have a better chance at winning a championship under a hard-cap system. It’s speculative. Something that can’t be proven one way or the other.
I don’t really care about a “true underdog” winning the championship. I prefer a league where you actually have to be really good to win a championship. That holds more value to me than a system where a new unspectacular team flukes their way too a title every year because there’s no one really good around to beat them.
It was also a match up that never would have happened under a hard-cap system. Dallas had the second highest payroll last year. That team could have only existed under a soft cap..
I don’t see it that way. If The Kings aren’t going to be deep in the playoffs, then all I care about is seeing good basketball. I don’t really care who the teams are. The 08 and 10 finals both drew the best rating since the Jordan era, so I’d say that it didn’t kill the enthusiasm for most folks.
And what’s wrong with that? Sure it sucks when you’re team isn’t on the list but it’s great when your team is.
That’s lame to me. I wouldn’t want to take a stab in the dark at who the good teams were going to be every year. I like to know who the big dogs are, who the pretenders are, and who the losers are.
That’s true in the NBA under the current system too. The Spurs are the second most winning franchise in the last decade and they did it not by outspending everyone, but by drafting really well and having the right coach for their players.
I didn’t say I rooted for them to be in the finals. My position is, whoever the best teams are should be the ones in the finals. If that happens to be those teams, then so be it. If it happens to be the Spurs, OKC, Dallas, or the Kings, that’s even better.
I don’t really care about a “true underdog” winning the championship. I prefer a league where you actually have to be really good to win a championship. That holds more value to me than a system where a new unspectacular team flukes their way too a title every year because there’s no one really good around to beat them.
It was also a match up that never would have happened under a hard-cap system. Dallas had the second highest payroll last year. That team could have only existed under a soft cap..
I don’t see it that way. If The Kings aren’t going to be deep in the playoffs, then all I care about is seeing good basketball. I don’t really care who the teams are. The 08 and 10 finals both drew the best rating since the Jordan era, so I’d say that it didn’t kill the enthusiasm for most folks.
And what’s wrong with that? Sure it sucks when you’re team isn’t on the list but it’s great when your team is.
That’s lame to me. I wouldn’t want to take a stab in the dark at who the good teams were going to be every year. I like to know who the big dogs are, who the pretenders are, and who the losers are.
That’s true in the NBA under the current system too. The Spurs are the second most winning franchise in the last decade and they did it not by outspending everyone, but by drafting really well and having the right coach for their players.
I didn’t say I rooted for them to be in the finals. My position is, whoever the best teams are should be the ones in the finals. If that happens to be those teams, then so be it. If it happens to be the Spurs, OKC, Dallas, or the Kings, that’s even better.
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I don’t buy that at all. They were one of the best franchises in the NBA from 98 to about 04 and would have been for even longer if Webber didn't get injured. Stern even called them the model franchise. It seems like a lot of Kings fans are wanting to blame the terrible basketball of the last five years on the system rather than on Kings managemet.
That sounds like sour grapes. Which I can understand. But what I can’t understand is rooting for something that while it may break up their teams, will also break up our own team in a few years.
That sounds like sour grapes. Which I can understand. But what I can’t understand is rooting for something that while it may break up their teams, will also break up our own team in a few years.
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Try as you might you are never going to be able to truly equalize the markets. New York/L.A. are always going to be >>> Sacrmento in the minds of the young men who decide where they want to play. So unless you create a system wihtout free agency, small markets will never be able to match the allure of the big markets. In fact really what has gone wrong with the current system competitively has not so much been finances -- Dallas and L.A. do overspend bigtime, but so have teams like New York and Portland, to much less effect -- what has gone wrong of late is that the players have started to decide that big market allure is SO powerful to their dim little senses, that neither money, loyalty, or honor are going to have any say in the matter -- they want and want and want. In the face of that attitude, IMO appropriately tagged as a "me" generation fo stars wihtotu the courage/conviction of their predecessors, a $45 mil hard cap is hardly an impediment. Miami could still have performed nearly the same maneuver. Any big allure team could. Just clear room under the cap, whatever it is, and let the free agents flock to you.
I am not going to go through your posts a line at a time - I think I have explained how I feel. 
I will say that your response about the Lakers in the championship many years is misleading. The comment wasn't that the Lakers aren't good, the comment was in regards to YOUR statement that you would like to see the Lakers in every year. BIG difference.
I get it. You want an established heirarchy of teams that some will always be good and some will always be bad. I just don't know why......what's the fun in that? Where is the mystery about how the season will play out every year? Is it fun for you to know the Lakers will be one of the top couple of teams in the West each year? I want some parity where other cities get in on the fun as well. Again, not a system where everyone is equal, just a system where every organization has a more equal chance at being competitive.
I don't know why you hate that idea so much. For a small market franchise fan, you don't seem to want to see any small market franchises succeed.....
I will say that your response about the Lakers in the championship many years is misleading. The comment wasn't that the Lakers aren't good, the comment was in regards to YOUR statement that you would like to see the Lakers in every year. BIG difference.
I get it. You want an established heirarchy of teams that some will always be good and some will always be bad. I just don't know why......what's the fun in that? Where is the mystery about how the season will play out every year? Is it fun for you to know the Lakers will be one of the top couple of teams in the West each year? I want some parity where other cities get in on the fun as well. Again, not a system where everyone is equal, just a system where every organization has a more equal chance at being competitive.
I don't know why you hate that idea so much. For a small market franchise fan, you don't seem to want to see any small market franchises succeed.....
I never said anything like that, though. I said that I’d rather see The Lakers and Celtics duke it out every year than to see a couple of new mediocre teams every year.
But it’s not some will always be good and some will always be bad. There’s an ebb and flow to it. Teams have their time at the top and inevitably their time in the basement. If there are any teams that are always bad, ala Clipper, Timberwolves, etc. it’s due to chronically poor management, not the system.
There’s plenty of mystery to me. No one would have thought The Spurs would win 4 titles. Or that The 04 Pistons would beat the “dream Team” Lakers, or that this years Mavericks would beat The Lakers and Heat.
I mean what do you want, A Timberwolves/Bobcats finals?
No. I hate it actually. But when you have the best player of this generation, you’re going to be a top team every year. That doesn’t mean I want to penalize every other team just to take The Lakers down a peg or two, though.
I see plenty of parity (competition). Just this year we saw the small market Grizzlies upset the top seeded Spurs. We saw a young small market Thunder team go to the conference finals. We say a Dallas team that no one picked upset the two time defending champion Lakers and beat the Miami Superfriends in the finals, and we saw a Hawks team upset the Magic.
As I’ve just pointed out though, plenty of small market teams had success this year. The Kings had success as a small market for years. The Jazz and Spurs are very successful small markets. The idea that small markets can’t be successful is largely a myth and partly an excuse for losing.
But it’s not some will always be good and some will always be bad. There’s an ebb and flow to it. Teams have their time at the top and inevitably their time in the basement. If there are any teams that are always bad, ala Clipper, Timberwolves, etc. it’s due to chronically poor management, not the system.
There’s plenty of mystery to me. No one would have thought The Spurs would win 4 titles. Or that The 04 Pistons would beat the “dream Team” Lakers, or that this years Mavericks would beat The Lakers and Heat.
I mean what do you want, A Timberwolves/Bobcats finals?
No. I hate it actually. But when you have the best player of this generation, you’re going to be a top team every year. That doesn’t mean I want to penalize every other team just to take The Lakers down a peg or two, though.
I see plenty of parity (competition). Just this year we saw the small market Grizzlies upset the top seeded Spurs. We saw a young small market Thunder team go to the conference finals. We say a Dallas team that no one picked upset the two time defending champion Lakers and beat the Miami Superfriends in the finals, and we saw a Hawks team upset the Magic.
As I’ve just pointed out though, plenty of small market teams had success this year. The Kings had success as a small market for years. The Jazz and Spurs are very successful small markets. The idea that small markets can’t be successful is largely a myth and partly an excuse for losing.
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The Knicks were bad because they signed bad, no horrible, contracts, if you allowed them to erase bad contracts that problem is solved.
How did the Lakers get the two best post-Jordan players anyhow? Well one ditched his team after his rookie contract and by all accounts had planned to join the Lakers while still under contract so he could pursue his rap and acting careers simultaneously to his basketball career and the other told every GM in the league that he would only sign with two teams. Care to guess which?
How did the Lakers get the two best post-Jordan players anyhow? Well one ditched his team after his rookie contract and by all accounts had planned to join the Lakers while still under contract so he could pursue his rap and acting careers simultaneously to his basketball career and the other told every GM in the league that he would only sign with two teams. Care to guess which?
Rookie, I'm not trying to have a war with you, but your the most argumentative person I know. Frankly, I find it boring to go back and argue every point, line by line. And I have better things to do with my time. I was simply trying to have a discussion, not an argument. I had enough when you called me disingenuous. Maybe another time.
Luck, mostly. Kobe wasn’t even a top 10 pick and came off the bench his first few years. No one knew at the time he’d develop into the player he did.
A hard-cap isn’t going to prevent that kind of thing from happening, though. L.A. is always going to have an allure to players that no other team has. That’s just the way it is.
A hard-cap isn’t going to prevent that kind of thing from happening, though. L.A. is always going to have an allure to players that no other team has. That’s just the way it is.
Sometimes things look good on paper, but when put into reality unforeseen pleasantries enter the picture. I think a "true" hard cap could be like this. If you put the heavy restraints on player salaries like the league seems to want, then other intangibles will come into play such as how much can you make in endorsements from one market over another. The big cities will always have the advantage here.
However, I've seen some very good suggestions on this board that sound a lot more reasonable in terms of a much harder soft cap. I like the idea of the bird exception being not transferable unless the player is still on his rookie contract. I think sign and trades if not eliminated should at least have better protections for the team being backed into a corner. I think the mid-level should have shorter years on it and possibly split into two smaller ones with teams over the luxury tax not having it available at all. The players percentage of BRI should also be lowered below what the players are offering to probably in the neighborhood of 51-53%.
Then on the owner side, you have to address the revenue sharing with more than token gestures. You probably should have all teams put around %40 of local TV revenue into the general pot to be split evenly among all teams. This would allow a more favorable climate for the mid to small market teams without overly hampering the large markets since you need both strong large and smaller markets. I would add that if a team exceeds a super tax level, then a larger percentage of their local TV revenue should be put into the pool.
However, I've seen some very good suggestions on this board that sound a lot more reasonable in terms of a much harder soft cap. I like the idea of the bird exception being not transferable unless the player is still on his rookie contract. I think sign and trades if not eliminated should at least have better protections for the team being backed into a corner. I think the mid-level should have shorter years on it and possibly split into two smaller ones with teams over the luxury tax not having it available at all. The players percentage of BRI should also be lowered below what the players are offering to probably in the neighborhood of 51-53%.
Then on the owner side, you have to address the revenue sharing with more than token gestures. You probably should have all teams put around %40 of local TV revenue into the general pot to be split evenly among all teams. This would allow a more favorable climate for the mid to small market teams without overly hampering the large markets since you need both strong large and smaller markets. I would add that if a team exceeds a super tax level, then a larger percentage of their local TV revenue should be put into the pool.
I'm not trying to argue. I think of it as debating. Your question just seemed a little tricky to me. Of course i wouldn't rather see the Lakers in the finals than The Kings. I just don't agree that a hard-cap is going to give The Kings any better chance at making the final than they have now and in the long run I think it could even hurt their chances.
I don't think the disscussion is about picking winners and losers, its about trying to make the playing field as close to the same for everyone. Now I realize that we don't live in an idealistic world where everyone is blessed with the same opportunities. But if its possibe to create more balance, then I'm all for it. The biggest inequity is the amount of money that the big market teams have versus the small market teams. You can't stop the big market teams from making money, nor would I want to. But you can limit the amount of money they're allowed to spend.
There's no denying that cities like LA and New York will always have the advantage that the big media market have that attract the stars. That won't change regardless of what the rules are. But you can force the bigger markets to manage their money better, if they want to be in position to sign those stars. The best teams will still be in the championships, they just might have different names than in the past. But teams like the Spurs will always be competitive because of how they're managed.
I think one of the problems with the NBA is that there aren't many more stars now than when the league had only 16 teams. So thanks to expansion, the talent pool is diluted. There aren't enough big stars to go around. Same thing has happened to baseball. There were players like Ted Williams sitting on the bench waiting for their chance. Now players are forced up into the majors with just a year or two in the minors. But I digress. You and I will just have to agree to disagree. My major point is, that who wins and who loses should be determined by management making the right choices in player decisions, and coaching decisions, and not by how much money they have in their pocket.
There's no denying that cities like LA and New York will always have the advantage that the big media market have that attract the stars. That won't change regardless of what the rules are. But you can force the bigger markets to manage their money better, if they want to be in position to sign those stars. The best teams will still be in the championships, they just might have different names than in the past. But teams like the Spurs will always be competitive because of how they're managed.
I think one of the problems with the NBA is that there aren't many more stars now than when the league had only 16 teams. So thanks to expansion, the talent pool is diluted. There aren't enough big stars to go around. Same thing has happened to baseball. There were players like Ted Williams sitting on the bench waiting for their chance. Now players are forced up into the majors with just a year or two in the minors. But I digress. You and I will just have to agree to disagree. My major point is, that who wins and who loses should be determined by management making the right choices in player decisions, and coaching decisions, and not by how much money they have in their pocket.
That was realy one fo the key turning points. Essentially one of the great problems facing the NBA the last lockout was that star players, including rookies, were demanding absolutely ridiculous monster contracts with no controls. So the NBA came up with a solution: max contracts, and a rookie wage scale. But then the law of unintended consequences reared its ugly head, and now because the collective bargaining agreement no longer allowed star players and their agents to extort infinite sums of money from less desirable teams in order to stay, all of a sudden the finanical incentives which had once overcome any "I want brighyt lights big city" impulses of the star players were no longer there. Combined with the rise of advertising dollars as a source of income as important as the contract itself, capping star players' salaries opened the door for them to start defecting. It just took a little while for teams to fully exploit that, combined with a new generation of stars with "instant gratification" tatooed across their foreheads.
Now thing is, for THAT problem, which is obviously just one among many, but for that problem the absolute LAST thing you want to do is establish a hardcap. Once upon a time small markets' one weapon was that they could spend infinite amounts of money they did not have to entice stars to stay. Then that was cut to being able to just offer a max contract with one additional year, and the stars have started to defect. Take away even that, take away any financial advantage at all and the little guy is going to lose unless you put in some artifical safeguards to help him (franchise tags etc.).
Which is why they would need to create some kind on non-transferable exceptions to a hard cap to balance things out.
I like how MLS doesn't hold some salaries against the cap and others are assigned a max value.
Maybe say first round draft pick salaries are exempt from the cap on their rookie contracts and can be re-signed at a fixed cap hit regardless of their actual contract value.
Or work endorsement deals into the salary cap somehow by giving teams flex cap money?
There's no reason the NBA can't be creative and lead the way for other leagues to follow here.
I like how MLS doesn't hold some salaries against the cap and others are assigned a max value.
Maybe say first round draft pick salaries are exempt from the cap on their rookie contracts and can be re-signed at a fixed cap hit regardless of their actual contract value.
Or work endorsement deals into the salary cap somehow by giving teams flex cap money?
There's no reason the NBA can't be creative and lead the way for other leagues to follow here.
I understand the concept of leveling the playing field by limiting what the big markets can spend and can see why it appeals to folks even though I don't agree with it myself. The main problem I have is that in order to limit the big teams you have to limit the small ones as well and that could come back to haunt the Kings when they're ready to contend a few years down the road, either by not being able retain all of their good players or by not being able to sign that final player or two (think Jim Jackson and Keon Clark) to put them over the top. I also think that revenue sharing, limits on player contracts, and limits on guaranteed contracts are better ways of helping the smaller teams compete while still allowing owners to spend what they want. Like you said though, we can agree to disagree. I don't really plan to change anyone's mind and don't expect anyone to change mine but it's still interesting to explore all the different sides of the issue.
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The point that many would make is that the smaller market teams are already limited by the simple fact that they don't have the same money to throw around. The idea of the hard cap is that it will force the big market teams to be limited as well (even though they will have much more money to spend). Obviously, the big markets will always have the advantage so all you can hope to do is make their advantage a little bit smaller if at all possible.