Jul 01 2008
NBA Free Agency Begins!
*yawn*, wake me up when it is over.
The NFL and MLB have truly exciting off seasons, with plenty of free agents and trades to go around. Unfortunately, the NBA has more player movement restrictions then the NCAA has recruiting restrictions. While the salary cap is designed to help all teams be fiscally viable and produce some form of parity, it also makes it extremely difficult for teams to make moves.
Consider this, if for some reason the San Antonio Spurs wanted to trade Tim Duncan, they generally would only be able to move him to either a team with salary cap space (currently Memphis, LA Clippers or Sixers) or take back enough garbage to even out the salary exchange.
A rule such as this is intended to prevent teams with unlimited access to cash (such as the Knicks) from trading picks and the like while acquiring high priced talent and heading far over the cap. While it works in theory, teams are so restricted from making trades, that one of the best bargaining chips isn’t a player with talent, but rather a player with an expiring contract. For example, the Jason Kidd to Dallas deal last year, only went through because the Mavericks were able to include high priced waste, Keith Van Horn who is essentially retired.
The cause of all this drama is mostly the guaranteed contracts. While I generally support players being able to sign a contract, and have the team have to pay it out, it really reduces one of the more entertaining features of sports.
To further the problem, there are the restricted free agents. While these players, can move they often don’t because their team can just match the contract and keep them.
My solutions are twofold.
First, do away with the trade restrictions. Most teams don’t want to pay the luxury tax anyway, so it is doubtful that they are going to acquire several max contract players and head far over the salary cap anyway. We see this now in baseball, where the high payroll teams like both New York teams and Boston, are becoming more cautious about signing free agents. So, how often is a team going to seek to acquire more than one or two quality high free agent players in order to “win now”, if it also means they’ll be wasting money with the luxury tax. Meanwhile the team trading said star, will be able to acquire the asset they really want, young players without having to take on a Van Horn just to satisfy a stupid restriction.
Second, allow teams to buy out contracts and free up cap space for the following season. For example, the Knicks have Jerome James under contract for a remaining two years and roughly $10 million dollars. Under my plan, the Knicks could buy him out before the end of the fiscal year (June 30th) and the buyout amount is accelerated to the current season. If they were to buy him out for $8 million, that amount would count in the 2007-2008 season and they’d additionally have to pay any luxury tax incurred. However, for the next season beginning July 1st, he no longer counts against their cap. This benefits the player (he gets most of his money due, and is able to become a free agent) and benefits the team (they take a hit now, but free cap space for other moves). This is very similar to the NFL’s rules, although they do not have guaranteed contracts.
The goal of all this, is to make the off-season interesting for fans, keep players financially happy and allow GMs to sculpt their rosters now, rather than waiting for contracts to expire. If a team wants to jettison 7 players making a total of $45 million, they can do that, but they’ll likely pay close to or all of it between buyouts and additional luxury tax.
Think about the possibilities, if teams are able to jettison overpaid players. One, there would be more free agent veterans available to teams. James at $5 million is overpaid, but at $1.5 million as a backup center is attractive. Two, there are more teams with cash available and the ability to trade young talent to acquire veteran stars.
