by Stop Mike Lupica on July 30 at 10:04AM
True Hoops has a post up that is entitled "The Salary Cap Cost the NBA Josh Childress". In this post, Henry Abbott writes, and responds, to a letter from a reader suggesting that the NBA should consider removing the salary cap due to the Josh Childress situation.
Just to backtrack a bit the theory, as Abbott explains early on in his post, is that Josh Childress would have stayed in the NBA had he not been a restricted free agent, and had the contending teams that were willing to pay him (Childress has stated he knows there were teams that would have paid him) been able to sign him.
There's a problem with Childress take on the situation, though. For one, if restricted free agency is what was limiting Childress from signing with his preferred choice of team, then he could have taken the one-year tenor from the Hawks, and been an unrestricted free agent next season, free to sign anywhere he wants. Especially since next season there will be more money available... more teams will be under the cap after next season than right now, with huge contracts like Steve Francis, Allen Iverson, Stephon Marbury, and Jason Kidd expiring (it should be noted that Portland is the only team that really immediately benefits from those expiring contracts, but the other three teams - the Mavs, Knicks, and Nuggets - might make moves that will allow them or some other teams to get under the cap next offseason).
This is essentially what Ben Gordon is doing this year. And if making money right now was the only concern in Childress' mind, then he could have pursued a deal with Olympiacos Piraeus, or another Euroteam, at any point in his career.
No, the problem is that Josh Childress is not being offered the kind of money that he would like, the kind of money that he feels he is worth. And raising the salary cap wouldn't fix the problem. Raising the salary cap would just allow teams to spend more money on superstars. If the cap was $10 million higher per team this offseason, you would have even larger contracts for guys like Elton Brand, Gilbert Arenas, and Baron Davis. Yet it is doubtful Josh Childress would have benefited, mainly because most teams would be over the cap, no matter where the cap is set.
Kelly Dwyer's splendid Yahoo! post gets more into the essence of the issue here, which isn't so much about the size of the cap, but the allocation of cap space.
On a sidenote, a while back I started working on a post on "Creating The Perfect Salary Cap". In that post I because tried to determine the right mix of veteran players and young players to have, how to space apart their contracts, and how much each player should be paid. For example, an true All-Star (someone who goes to the game annually), in his prime (26-32) should get $12-15 million. An All-NBA type All-Star (someone on the first or second team regularly) might warrant a bit more - $15-17 million. A Hall of Fame, top-7 player in his prime is the top tier, at about $18-20 million. In the NBA right now, only a handful of players are really worth that top tier: Kobe, LeBron, Duncan. Chris Paul eventually.
The end result of that post was the conclusion that the closest thing to an ideal salary cap in the NBA was the Detroit Pistons. They pay Billups, Hamilton, Prince and Rasheed about the same: $10-14 million. Which is pretty close to where they belong: regular All-Stars (except for Prince, who is slightly below that) in their prime. Not All-NBA, not Hall of Famers, but solid third tier players.
Getting back to Childress: the salary cap allocations of most teams do not allow for a sixth man, with possible starter potential, to make the kind of money Childress thought he was worth (about $7-9 million a year). Certainly there are sixth men worth that kind of money, if not more - guys like Manu Ginobili and Barbosa. But those are the top players in those roles in the NBA. Childress is not.
The simple "solution" to the Childress problem, if there exists a problem to begin with (and that is a totally different post), would be not for the NBA to raise the salary cap, but to raise the Mid Level Exemption. The MLE is what allows free agents that aren't superstars to really move around the league. For example, the Clippers, Warriors and 76ers were the three teams below the cap this offseason, because they were the only three teams with huge contracts that expired and were not re-signed. The Wizards, had Gilbert Arenas not re-signed with them, would have been under the cap. The Clippers and Warriors had a mini-war going on between the two teams, as they raided and re-raided the other team's roster. Other than those teams, no other NBA team could offer Childress a contract larger than the MLE, which is about $6 million.
The Hawks, knowing this, simply offered Childress a contract along those lines: 5 years, $33 million. That's the most he could get from any other team, plus an extra million to make it the best offer. It's the E-bay bid... if you know the most someone else is willing to pay for an item is $75, you would offer $76 and win the auction. That's the NBA, in essence: everyone knows what any other team can, and is willing to, offer. So it's an open bidding process.
Childress broke the mold by going to Europe, for far better than MLE money... he got a 3 year, $32.5 dollar deal. He got the $8 million a year he was looking for, plus a bit more.
Back to the solution... if you raise the MLE in the NBA then guys like Childress can get what they want, provided there is a team actually willing to pay him that much money. A better example would be Corey Maggette, though. Corey supposedly thought long and hard about signing with competitive teams like... the Spurs, the Jazz, or even the Pistons. In the end, he signed with the Warriors because they could offer him $10 million a year for the next 5 seasons. The best those other teams could do is $6 million a year. Big difference. My guess is that Maggette would have signed with the Spurs or Jazz if he could have gotten $8 million a year.
The Proposal: Let's have some fun with the MLE. Let every team start with a MLE at $6 million, which is where it stands now. Every season they don't use the MLE, they get an extra one million dollars added to their MLE amount. It's capped off at $10 million, if they go 4 seasons in a row without signing a MLE. Now that's a salary structure that would be require creative planning with foresight.
For example, a team might not use the MLE this season. The Knicks are capped out, already have the max 15 players signed, and no reason to push because, well, they aren't going anywhere this season. Same thing probably applies to the Knicks next season, too. Now, in 2010, the Knicks would be able to sign a free agent to a $8 million a season deal. If the Knicks are in good shape, they might decide to go after a Maggette-type player at those rates, and see if it pans out. Or they might pass, and wait one more season, and use the $9 million MLE to sign whoever the top non-superstar free agent in 2011 might be.
And this plan benefits Josh Childress/Ben Gordon types, too. A team with a MLE worth $7 million might have offered Childress that amount to sign him. Why not? All it means is that next season they would go back down to a $6 million MLE. It's not like starting all over from scratch after signing a $10 million MLE.
Ben Gordon is unlikely to attract superstar money, like Brand, Arenas, and Davis. Most likely he's looking at Corey Maggette money ($50 million over 5 years). Now, how many teams will be under the cap next season that can offer him that money? The Blazers? The Nets? It's hard to say for sure now, with all those large expiring contracts yet to be sorted out, but I would guess that, come next offseason, at best a handful of teams will be under the cap and able to offer Gordon a contract beyond the MLE.
But if there were just a few teams able to offer Gordon a bit more than that $6 million a year MLE... if there were 2-4 teams that could offer him $8 million a year, or even $9 million a year... well, now you have a system that both promotes cap frugality (i.e. instead of blowing your MLE every year - yeah, I'm talking to you Dallas, but only because Isiah Thomas is no longer here in NY - you would see teams save the MLE until it was big enough to sign a really good player, and not just an Diop or Darko type player) and at the same time keeps players happy. Especially the players that might be attracted to signing with European clubs (the Josh Childress/Ben Gordon types). Someone tell David Stern.
Leave a comment
Just to backtrack a bit the theory, as Abbott explains early on in his post, is that Josh Childress would have stayed in the NBA had he not been a restricted free agent, and had the contending teams that were willing to pay him (Childress has stated he knows there were teams that would have paid him) been able to sign him.
There's a problem with Childress take on the situation, though. For one, if restricted free agency is what was limiting Childress from signing with his preferred choice of team, then he could have taken the one-year tenor from the Hawks, and been an unrestricted free agent next season, free to sign anywhere he wants. Especially since next season there will be more money available... more teams will be under the cap after next season than right now, with huge contracts like Steve Francis, Allen Iverson, Stephon Marbury, and Jason Kidd expiring (it should be noted that Portland is the only team that really immediately benefits from those expiring contracts, but the other three teams - the Mavs, Knicks, and Nuggets - might make moves that will allow them or some other teams to get under the cap next offseason).
This is essentially what Ben Gordon is doing this year. And if making money right now was the only concern in Childress' mind, then he could have pursued a deal with Olympiacos Piraeus, or another Euroteam, at any point in his career.
No, the problem is that Josh Childress is not being offered the kind of money that he would like, the kind of money that he feels he is worth. And raising the salary cap wouldn't fix the problem. Raising the salary cap would just allow teams to spend more money on superstars. If the cap was $10 million higher per team this offseason, you would have even larger contracts for guys like Elton Brand, Gilbert Arenas, and Baron Davis. Yet it is doubtful Josh Childress would have benefited, mainly because most teams would be over the cap, no matter where the cap is set.
Kelly Dwyer's splendid Yahoo! post gets more into the essence of the issue here, which isn't so much about the size of the cap, but the allocation of cap space.
On a sidenote, a while back I started working on a post on "Creating The Perfect Salary Cap". In that post I because tried to determine the right mix of veteran players and young players to have, how to space apart their contracts, and how much each player should be paid. For example, an true All-Star (someone who goes to the game annually), in his prime (26-32) should get $12-15 million. An All-NBA type All-Star (someone on the first or second team regularly) might warrant a bit more - $15-17 million. A Hall of Fame, top-7 player in his prime is the top tier, at about $18-20 million. In the NBA right now, only a handful of players are really worth that top tier: Kobe, LeBron, Duncan. Chris Paul eventually.
The end result of that post was the conclusion that the closest thing to an ideal salary cap in the NBA was the Detroit Pistons. They pay Billups, Hamilton, Prince and Rasheed about the same: $10-14 million. Which is pretty close to where they belong: regular All-Stars (except for Prince, who is slightly below that) in their prime. Not All-NBA, not Hall of Famers, but solid third tier players.
Getting back to Childress: the salary cap allocations of most teams do not allow for a sixth man, with possible starter potential, to make the kind of money Childress thought he was worth (about $7-9 million a year). Certainly there are sixth men worth that kind of money, if not more - guys like Manu Ginobili and Barbosa. But those are the top players in those roles in the NBA. Childress is not.
The simple "solution" to the Childress problem, if there exists a problem to begin with (and that is a totally different post), would be not for the NBA to raise the salary cap, but to raise the Mid Level Exemption. The MLE is what allows free agents that aren't superstars to really move around the league. For example, the Clippers, Warriors and 76ers were the three teams below the cap this offseason, because they were the only three teams with huge contracts that expired and were not re-signed. The Wizards, had Gilbert Arenas not re-signed with them, would have been under the cap. The Clippers and Warriors had a mini-war going on between the two teams, as they raided and re-raided the other team's roster. Other than those teams, no other NBA team could offer Childress a contract larger than the MLE, which is about $6 million.
The Hawks, knowing this, simply offered Childress a contract along those lines: 5 years, $33 million. That's the most he could get from any other team, plus an extra million to make it the best offer. It's the E-bay bid... if you know the most someone else is willing to pay for an item is $75, you would offer $76 and win the auction. That's the NBA, in essence: everyone knows what any other team can, and is willing to, offer. So it's an open bidding process.
Childress broke the mold by going to Europe, for far better than MLE money... he got a 3 year, $32.5 dollar deal. He got the $8 million a year he was looking for, plus a bit more.
Back to the solution... if you raise the MLE in the NBA then guys like Childress can get what they want, provided there is a team actually willing to pay him that much money. A better example would be Corey Maggette, though. Corey supposedly thought long and hard about signing with competitive teams like... the Spurs, the Jazz, or even the Pistons. In the end, he signed with the Warriors because they could offer him $10 million a year for the next 5 seasons. The best those other teams could do is $6 million a year. Big difference. My guess is that Maggette would have signed with the Spurs or Jazz if he could have gotten $8 million a year.
The Proposal: Let's have some fun with the MLE. Let every team start with a MLE at $6 million, which is where it stands now. Every season they don't use the MLE, they get an extra one million dollars added to their MLE amount. It's capped off at $10 million, if they go 4 seasons in a row without signing a MLE. Now that's a salary structure that would be require creative planning with foresight.
For example, a team might not use the MLE this season. The Knicks are capped out, already have the max 15 players signed, and no reason to push because, well, they aren't going anywhere this season. Same thing probably applies to the Knicks next season, too. Now, in 2010, the Knicks would be able to sign a free agent to a $8 million a season deal. If the Knicks are in good shape, they might decide to go after a Maggette-type player at those rates, and see if it pans out. Or they might pass, and wait one more season, and use the $9 million MLE to sign whoever the top non-superstar free agent in 2011 might be.
And this plan benefits Josh Childress/Ben Gordon types, too. A team with a MLE worth $7 million might have offered Childress that amount to sign him. Why not? All it means is that next season they would go back down to a $6 million MLE. It's not like starting all over from scratch after signing a $10 million MLE.
Ben Gordon is unlikely to attract superstar money, like Brand, Arenas, and Davis. Most likely he's looking at Corey Maggette money ($50 million over 5 years). Now, how many teams will be under the cap next season that can offer him that money? The Blazers? The Nets? It's hard to say for sure now, with all those large expiring contracts yet to be sorted out, but I would guess that, come next offseason, at best a handful of teams will be under the cap and able to offer Gordon a contract beyond the MLE.
But if there were just a few teams able to offer Gordon a bit more than that $6 million a year MLE... if there were 2-4 teams that could offer him $8 million a year, or even $9 million a year... well, now you have a system that both promotes cap frugality (i.e. instead of blowing your MLE every year - yeah, I'm talking to you Dallas, but only because Isiah Thomas is no longer here in NY - you would see teams save the MLE until it was big enough to sign a really good player, and not just an Diop or Darko type player) and at the same time keeps players happy. Especially the players that might be attracted to signing with European clubs (the Josh Childress/Ben Gordon types). Someone tell David Stern.
Leave a comment
|
http://www.brandshoeshopping.com/ cheap air jordan shox