The NBA’s collective
bargaining agreement (CBA) is commonly construed as a messy tradeoff between a
salary cap on the one hand and guaranteed contracts on
the other. The players union wants salaries to be guaranteed, the thinking
goes, while the owners want salaries to be capped. This thinking is flawed. Let’s
explore who really benefits from each of these politically charged attributes.
Philip Maymin
Basketball News Services
The NBA’s collective
bargaining agreement (CBA) is commonly construed as a messy tradeoff between a
salary cap on the one hand and guaranteed contracts on
the other. The players union wants salaries to be guaranteed, the thinking
goes, while the owners want salaries to be capped. This thinking is flawed. Let’s
explore who really benefits from each of these politically charged attributes.
There are two main sets of
participants in the CBA: owners and players. There are also various hangers-on
such as the referees but their contribution is minimal and could easily be
extricated into a separate agreement.
Among the owners and
players, however, there are internal factions. There are spendthrift owners
such as the Knicks, Lakers, and Mavs, and there are
frugal owners such as the Spurs, Pistons, and Clippers. There are superstar
players such as Shaquille O’Neal, Kevin Garnett, and Tracy McGrady, and there
are veterans who are out of the league or who subsist on 10-day contracts and
minor leagues.
A salary cap by definition
hurts most those players who, but for the existence of the cap, would have
earned more money. In other words, it hurts superstars. Guaranteed contracts by
definition hurt most those owners who players have stopped performing, and it
helps most those players who are not superstars.
In other words, the CBA as
written rewards mediocre players the most relative to what their value would be
in a free market setting. Anecdotal evidence abounds, particularly this
offseason when otherwise non-stellar players get long-term, high-salary deals.
What would be the right
thing to do instead? Before we throw the talented and entertaining baby out
with the dirty and polluted bath water that is the current morass of basketball’s
collective bargaining, let’s see how the real, substantive issues of both sides
could be addressed.
Underlying the guaranteed
contracts demand by the players union is a real nervousness about young
athletes sacrificing alternative careers to join the sport only to get injured
and never paid. That would be a sad state of affairs, of course, but is it
sadder than a doctor getting brain damage just after he lands his first job? Is
it sadder than a concert pianist losing a finger the night of his first
performance? Not necessarily. On the other hand, if there’s a way to address
the issue without going to extremes, perhaps that would be more palatable to
all parties involved.
Here’s one solution: instead
of guaranteed contracts, insist that all multi-year deals (including first
round draft picks) must include health insurance that pays an annuity on the
event of the player’s further inability to play. It wouldn’t have to be a huge
annuity, since clearly the player is no longer worth the mega-millions he would
have been worth could he play, but enough so that the player could live.
What about the owner’s
desire for a cap on maximum salaries? The real issue there is when a player
becomes a hometown favorite and a legend, he can hold
the team up for a huge ransom, essentially removing all profit from the owners.
Then the owners have no interest in paying that much to the player and the fans
are angry when they leave for higher-paid employment elsewhere.
No, that’s not really the
issue, is it? That’s a mirage painted by the thrifty owners to convince people to
sign on to the salary cap. The above scenario has a contradiction: the player
is most valuable to the team he is currently on, yet another team is willing to
pay him more. That doesn’t make any sense. If another team is
indeed willing to pay more, then tough luck to the small-market town where the
player is currently stationed. He could be the best player in the world
but if no one is coming out to watch him, and hence pay him, why shouldn’t he
move to where he’ll be more appreciated?
Restricted free agency in
fact solves most of these sorts of problems. If Kenyon Martin isn’t getting the
money he needs in New Jersey, it is a direct consequence of the fact that over
the past three years, not enough people have paid enough money in ticket and
television revenue to justify paying him that much to stay. Apparently
It’s time for a change in
the CBA. Hopefully it will allow the market to breathe a little freer, and let fans watch a sport where the superstars, and
not the mediocre second tier, are the most rewarded.