The "superteam" is not happening in Sacto. Its just not. The pressure will be on for Reke and Cousins to leave that berg from the moment they blossom, from their agents, their sponsors, their peers, and quite possibly their families. Let alone more guys coming who have NEVER come in the entire history of that city. Once the players control the process of superteam creation, they are all going to take place in favored locales for prominent teams. New York, Boston, Miami, L.A.. Maybe Chicago despite the snub this offseason. And even if it DID magically work out so Sacramento somehow got added to the shortlist, so what? How stupid and selfish a group of fans would we have to be to celebrate becoming part of a great problem that would severely diminish the very thing we've been chasing. The ultimate response to the players saying "if you can't beat them, join them" would be for the fans to say that themselves -- well the league is ****ed, guess we might as well join in the ****ing.
And the danger here BTW is precisely that the players are driving this. Always in the past, and I do mean always, superteams (and BTW there has basically only been a couple that have ever had more than 1 in his prime franchise player) were constructed by front offices. That meant they were the result of competition, and any team in theory had the ability to do the same thing under the artifical balances negotiated under the CBAs. There was no chance of proliferation, because it was all the result of a competitive process. Make good trades, draft well, maybe you get one. Make bad trades, you lose out. But there have been relatively few checks on the players constructing a team like Miami, because the assumption always was that you could count on players' greed and competetive ego to serve as a parity inducing element. If those things can't function as a balance anymore, than there is basically NOTHING to prevent elite players and powerbroker agents from manipulating the entire system however they wish to. Alarmist? Today, yes. Let the Heat run off the next 5 titles and be poised to completely lock an entire generation of superstars out of the title hunt unless they adopt similar tactics, and it goes from alarmist to just flat fact. And then people are going to wonder why didn't anybody stop this from happening?
There are a very limited number of elite talents in the league at any one time. Not nearly enough to go around in a league that struggles with true parity anyway (a total of 8 teams comprising essentially 12 different dynasties (some doubled up) have won every title for the past 30 years. If the few franchise players that there are end up clumped on a handful of teams people arguing that this is not a problem are going to look flat ignorant. Its a disaster in the making. And there are basically only two ways to prevent it. One is rules changes to stop this in the future. Uolj seems to be clinging to that, but we are entering an incredibly contentious CBA with a lockout already looming, and these issues could easily, and I do mean easily, get left behind in the face of the hundreds of millions of dollars being haggled over. And with the new CBA beginning next year (or whenever we get to play again), if its not dealt with next summer, by the time the next CBA after that is being negotiated the damage will already be done. Guys will already be timing their outs to try to team up to knock off the 6x champions. The alternate route to shortciruiting the disaster is simply the Heat losing. It not working. Which is of course what we are talking about here. However the Heat cannot lose and tarnish the superstar team strategy without the Lakers winning now can they?
First off, as it pertains to the topic of the thread, I will never root for the Lakers. Ever. Sorry. If the NBA crashes and burns, I'll have the satisfaction of knowing that the ****** up Laker fans started it outside the Staples Center as they lit cop cars on fire and beat each other up. Read my fingertips: I. Will. Not. Root. For. The. *******. Lakers. Get that through your skull.
Secondly, it is precisely the alarmist nature of your post that I'm standing against. For the demise of true competition in the NBA (and professional sports in general) to come about starting with this offseason's events, the SuperHeat have to actually succeed in some significant fashion. I've seen plenty of pundits, fans, former players, front offices, coaches, etc., stating their doubts that the Heat will be able to leapfrog the other teams in the East and bully their way into the Finals in one fell swoop. And if they were to fail this season, then all bets are off as far as chemistry is concerned. The team could implode on itself like a dying star. They've done a nice job adding players around the Three, but they still don't have a complete roster. We'll see how that pans out as we get closer to tip-off. There are other obstacles that they'll have to clear in order to actually be Kings of the Castle. It's still July. Let's wait.
As for the fix to this, I don't think that restricting free agency to the point that players can't choose where they want to play is the answer. One, the players' association would never let it happen. Two, if a player plays out his contract, he's earned his free agency. I don't think the team that drafted him or traded for him should have the right to lock him down indefinitely. I'd be open to a franchise player tag if it offered the player fair compensation (unlike the NFL's tag, which forces the player to play on a non-guaranteed one year deal, which is not commensurate to his free market value) and was restrictive in nature for the team using it. But I would hope that a fix could be found without using a tag.
I've sort of been a propopent of a hard cap, or at least a more firm cap than what we have now. That limitation would have cooled all talk of the SuperHeat before it even got going. It would make it practically impossible for a team to spend their way into contention, and would force a team to use all three avenues of team building to be relevant (not just free agency, but also the draft and trades). For instance, look at all the money the Lakers have put on their books in the last two years: Bynum's extension, Gasol's extension, Kobe's extension, Odom's deal, Artest for the MLE, Fisher's new deal... They are nearly $40 million over the cap! For Miami this summer, it would have been pretty impossible for them to build a legitimate 13 man roster around their big three. After Miller and Haslem, they'd be at the cap, so how do you fill out the roster?
As for building dynasties, in short order, Miami will be at $70 million. If you want to fight a hard cap, then institute a crippling luxury tax, one that progressively increases the restrictions on a team that's over the cap. Set the tax threshold at the cap, and make the tax percentage increase every season that you remain over the threshold. With yearly increases in player salary, a team has to scale back after a couple of seasons. And for the billionaire owners who don't care about a $40 million tax payment every year, you take away the MLE and the ability to hand out extensions once a team is over the cap.
For teams that lose players in free agency, provide them with compensatory picks, provided they make an offer to said player before free agency begins. This would require a tweak in free agency rules: So July 1-8, negotiations are restricted to the team with Bird rights. If you make an offer during restricted free agency, and the player still leaves for another team, you get a compensatory pick for losing your free agent, and the value of the pick is determined by several factors, including the value of the contract you offered. So Cleveland would get a high value compensatory pick at max value for losing LeBron, but Phoenix would not get a pick for losing Amare, because they made no effort to sign him.
I don't agree with the idea that this summer's events mean the end of a truly competitive NBA (if you even agree that the NBA is "truly competitive" as it is now). I'm sure there are some fixes being discussed with league officials now. I strongly disagree with the idea that you should restrict a player's rights to choose where he wants to play once he's satisfied the terms of his contract. I do think it should be much more difficult for any team to a) do what Miami did this summer, and b) keep it together for any extended length of time. That way there is no 6x champion Miami Heat come 2016. They will have been broken up due to salary cap restrictions by then.
