NBA: A Radical Idea That Could End the Lockout
Have you ever heard of a person winning the lottery and then turning down the money? I haven't ever heard of anything like that, but that is basically the approach the NBA owners are taking during this lockout.
There are a lot of players that signed a big contract then didn't live up to their end of the deal.
On the other hand, the NBA players act like it is okay for a player to sign a seven-year contract worth over $100 million dollars, and then just "clock out" in the middle of that contract.
We've worked hard and sacrificed to get where we are today, so that guys like Stephon Marbury can act like a jerk and draw $20 million in unemployment.
Huh? Are you serious? How did we get here?
Both sides have a point. The owners created this mess, and now they want a "reset." That is not fair to the players. The players want guaranteed contracts, but with all of the guys "stealing money" in the last decade, you can't blame the owners for wanting some safeguards in the system.
So today, I've come up with a plan. Instead of talking about the same old crap, why not just hit the whole system with a wrecking ball and start over? If we are going to start over, why not look for an answer in the most obvious place? Why not ask a guy who understands what it is like to be a player and an owner? Especially since there is a guy sitting in the room, on the owners side, who also happens to be arguably the greatest player to ever lace 'em up.
Of course, I'm talking about Michael Jordan.
First Idea: The Jordan Rule, No Max Salaries
1 of 9Michael Jordan was probably the best bargain in the history of sports. Did you know that the highest salary Jordan made during his first run with the Bulls (pre-baseball retirement) was less than $4 million dollars?
That is incredible!
During the Bulls' incredible 72-win season (1995-1996), Jordan made a measly $3.85 million dollars. Guys like Patrick Ewing and David Robinson were higher-paid players than Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. It wasn't until after that year, during the 1996-1997 season, that Jordan was finally paid what he was worth.
Michael Jordan made $30 million dollars during the 1997 season. The following season, his last with the Bulls, he earned $33 million. Today this wouldn't be possible, because the NBA has maximum salaries. Now, the most a guy could make is somewhere around $18-20 million, and that would be in the last year of a max contract.
This got me thinking, "Why can't an owner just pay a star as much as he wants?"
If Dan Gilbert had been able to say to LeBron, "I'll pay you $50 million dollars," do you think LeBron would have still taken his talents to South Beach?
Therefore, my first idea to help end this lockout is called "The Jordan Rule." An owner can pay his star as much as he wants, within the limits of the overall salary cap.
That brings me to my next idea...
Second Idea: A Hard Cap for Every Team Based on Simple Math
2 of 9Dan Levy wrote a great article on Bleacher Report about fixing player salaries. I'm going to piggy back off of Dan's idea by using some of his simple math.
The old salary cap was between $54-58 million, give or take. Dan came up with the idea of just giving every team a $60 million dollar cap, and then kind of basing the system off of that number. There are 30 NBA teams, and they all play 82 NBA games. When you multiply that (30 teams x 82 games), it equals 2,460 total games, and if you divide that by two (because there are two teams playing per game), you get a total of 1,230 NBA games per year.
If every team had a $60 million dollar salary cap, that would mean that there was a $1,463,414 pay roll per game, to be divided by the two teams. I decided to round up to $1,500,000 to make that a nice round number. If you reverse the math and pay out $1.5 million per game (split by the two teams, more on this in a minute), times 1,230 games, and then divide that amount between all 30 teams, you get a cap number of $61.5 million per team.
Are you still with me? Does this feel like a math class? Sorry about that!
If every NBA team has a $61.5 million dollar "base salary cap" (more on this in a moment), that means that the NBA players would actually be making more money! Because if every team is spending $61.5 million dollars apiece (instead of $54-58 million), that would equal more than $200 million dollars of extra revenue for the players per season.
Now let me explain more about the "Base Salary Cap."
A Hard Cap for Every Team Based on Simple Math, Continued...
3 of 9So every team has a "base cap" of $61.5 million dollars. That money is actually paid out per game. Each NBA basketball game (1,230 total) has a "payout" of $1.5 million dollar dollars. That amount is split between the two teams.
Dan Levy had the idea to pay the winner more than the loser. I love this idea! However, I disagree on the split that he had the winner taking (a pretty big difference between the winner and loser). In my formula, I'm splitting that $1.5 million "60/40" for the winners. So the winning team takes home $900,000, to be divided between all the players on that roster. The losing team takes home $600,000, to be split between the players on their roster.
So how do you divide that $900,000 between the players on the winning roster?
Levy had an idea to use "player metrics" to divide that game share between the players. I think that is a terrible idea (sorry, Dan). I don't like any system that places value on individual player statistics. I don't want a guy missing shots on purpose so he can get his own rebound or shooting the ball every time he touches it in the fourth quarter just so he can get paid more.
But I do like the game shares, and I do like placing a value on winning! That is a great idea.
That leads me to how I would split the game shares, and I think could revolutionize the entire NBA system.
The 100 Point Salary Cap System
4 of 9Instead of using Dan Levy’s “player metrics," I propose that every NBA team get “100 cap points” to use as its salary cap. Every team has 15 players on its roster; if it wanted to, it could divide that evenly among the players (not likely), or it could give more to the stars, less to the role players, and even less to those guys sitting by the water cooler.
Let's be honest—the stars are going to get more money.
So let’s pretend that Kevin Durant gets “20 points” of the Oklahoma City Thunder’s cap. He would be making 20 percent of all their winning/losing shares. So if the Thunder beat the Spurs, $900,000 would be divided among the Thunder (the winning team). Of that $900,000, Kevin Durant would get $180,000 (20 percent of $900,000).
Of course, it’s not like the players would be in the locker room dividing the money up after the game! This money would all be paid out in monthly paychecks, just like it is right now in the NBA. The difference would be that your salary would be based on (1) whether your team is winning or losing and (2) the number of points you occupy in your team’s salary cap.
Does it sound too crazy? Well, I’ll agree it’s different, but isn’t different what we need right now? Think about the Miami Heat, with James, Wade and Bosh. Could you fit three superstar players onto a roster using this model? You could if you paid the other guys a lot less, which is what the Heat are doing right now.
Wade, James and Bosh are each currently making a little over $14 million dollars per season. They could make more money using my 100-point system, because the Heat are a winning team—in my system, you get rewarded for winning.
Take a look at a sample of what the Miami Heat’s roster might look like using this system:
| # | Player | Cap Points | Base Salary | 60 win salary | 20 win salary |
| 1 | Wade | 23 | $14,145,000 | $15,456,000 | $12,696,000 |
| 2 | James | 23 | $14,145,000 | $15,456,000 | $12,696,000 |
| 3 | Bosh | 23 | $14,145,000 | $15,456,000 | $12,696,000 |
| 4 | starter | 8 | $4,920,000 | $5,376,000 | $4,416,000 |
| 5 | starter | 6 | $3,690,000 | $4,032,000 | $3,312,000 |
| 6 | 6th man | 4 | $2,460,000 | $2,688,000 | $2,208,000 |
| 7 | 7th man | 3 | $1,845,000 | $2,016,000 | $1,656,000 |
| 8 | 8th man | 3 | $1,845,000 | $2,016,000 | $1,655,000 |
| 9 | reserve | 2 | $1,230,000 | $1,344,000 | $1,104,000 |
| 10 | reserve | 2 | $1,230,000 | $1,344,000 | $1,104,000 |
| 11 | practice body | 1 | $615,000 | $672,000 | $552,000 |
| 12 | practice body | .5 | $307,000 | $336,000 | $276,000 |
| 13 | practice body | .5 | $307,000 | $366,000 | $276,000 |
| 14 | practice body | .5 | $307,000 | $366,000 | $276,000 |
| 15 | practice body | .5 | $307,000 | $366,000 | $276,000 |
| TOTAL | 100 | $61,500,000 | $67,200,000 | $55,200,000 |
Proof That the 100 Point System Is a Good Thing
5 of 9You want proof this is a good idea?
Last season, the Chicago Bulls' total salary was $52,270,349 dollars. The Bulls had a 62-20 record. Meanwhile, teams like the Magic and Knicks had much higher payrolls but didn't win as many games as the Bulls.
Shouldn't we reward winning?
Under my system, if a team like the Bulls won 62 games, their base salary would have jumped from $61.5 million dollars to $67.2 million dollars. The best team in the league, at least during the regular season, would have been paid the most. A star like Derek Rose would have made more money, because again, he is leading his team to victory.
Meanwhile, a player who tanks on his team and just quits on his coach (think of Stephon Marbury with the Knicks) would be costing himself money. And this is something you have to realize about NBA players—not all of them want to be great players, they just want to get rich.
If we reward winning, then players will try harder to win. Isn't that what we really want to see as fans?
"The Sterling Rule"
6 of 9Since each team gets 100 "cap points" to spend. Every "cap point" represents 1 percent of the salary cap. Let's just go ahead and say right now that a team has to spend at least 90 percent of their cap. We'll call this "The Sterling Rule" in honor of Clippers' owner Donald Sterling, who is notorious for not spending money.
Again, this would put more money in the players' pockets, and it would make the league more competitive. Consequently, the fans win (because the games are better), the players win (because every team has to spend money) and the owners win (because if the competition is great, then fan interest will increase, and so will profits).
Sounds easy, right? Moving on...
Shorten the Length of Contracts
7 of 9These six- and seven-year contracts are a great big crap shoot for the owners. Take a guy like Jermaine O'Neal for example. O'Neal was a good player, a really good player. Was he a "max level player?" I don't think so, but he was a really good player, so he got a max level deal.
So what if he was being overpaid by a million or two? No big deal, right?
Sure, it's not a big deal when a guy is overpaid by a million or two, but when O'Neal was slowed down by injuries, he became a shell of the player he truly was. When a guy becomes half the player he used to be, and he still has a couple years left on a max contract, that is a cap killer.
The owners want shorter contracts, and they want contracts that aren't fully guaranteed. Of course, the players reject this idea, but the players can't have it both ways. Either we go ahead with non-guaranteed contracts, or we shorten the deals. If a franchise makes a bad three- or four-year deal, it could recover. A bad seven-year deal? That sets your franchise back a decade.
So the longest deal any player can sign is three years as a free agent or four years with his own team. This gives franchises a greater margin of error when trying to sign players. If they make a mistake by giving a big contract to the wrong player, they can get out of the deal sooner.
Obviously, this is a good thing for the owners; however, it is also a good deal for the players. If a guy is not living up to his contract (Marbury, Eddie Currie, Gilbert Arenas, etc), then he is really "stealing" that money from another player. Because if that money wasn't tied up in an under performing player, then the team could use that money to sign a better, more deserving player.
Again, shorter contracts is a win-win for the players and owners.
What About BRI? What If the League Makes More Money?
8 of 9Looking at the numbers, the NBA made around $4 billion dollars in revenue last seaon. Using the numbers I've thrown out so far (30 NBA teams x $61.5 million dollars in salary per team), the players would only be getting about $1.8 billion dollars, or less than 50 percent of all the "Basketball Related Income" (BRI).
Of course, we have to fix that.
The next part of my plan would call for the players to get 52 percent of all BRI. If the NBA made $4 billion dollars again this season, the players would get a bump from the $1.8 billion (actually $1.845 billion) to $2.08 billion dollars ($2.08 billion = 52 percent of $4 billion).
I'll explain how this would work.
If the NBA makes $4 billion dollars again this season, the owners would give back an extra $235 million dollars to the players. This money would be divided back into the 30 NBA teams, meaning each NBA team would get an extra $7,833,333 to add to their salary cap.
That money would then be divided among the players on each roster, using our "cap points." So if LeBron James was worth 23 "cap points" to the Miami Heat, he would take in an extra $1.56 million dollars (23 percent of $7.8 million). Of course, this amount could be slightly more or less, depending on how many games the Heat won that season.
Again, it all goes back to winning and losing.
If this sounds crazy, it's really not. Under the current system, this already happens. Right now, the players are guaranteed 57 percent of all BRI. The salary cap and all contracts are based off of the NBA's projected income for that season. If the league makes more, then the players salaries are adjusted accordingly. So any "extra revenue that the NBA brings in is divided between the players and owners. The players would 57 percent of any "extra revenue" at the end of the season, and that amount would be added to each player's paycheck accordingly.
Final Thoughts: These Players Need to Listen to MJ
9 of 9So how do we make this happen? It all goes back to Michael Jordan.
Jordan is, in my opinion, the greatest player to ever play. Despite his greatness, he made less than $4 million dollars per season for most of his career. He wasn't the highest paid player in the league until the end of his career.
Today, he is the owner of an NBA team.
Of course, he made a gazillion dollars in endorsements, but think about that for a minute: he made peanuts compared to NBA players today, but today he owns an NBA team.
That is remarkable. The players should put themselves in his Air Jordan's.
Here is the greatest player ever, one of you, and now he is an owner, one of them. Don't you think he understands both sides of the argument? Don't you think he knows what is is like to feel like you're getting screwed by the owners? Don't you think he wanted more money?
Of course he did.
But there Jordan is, saying that the system needs to be changed. Jordan sees the bigger picture here, that the NBA is going to be stronger if all 30 teams in the NBA have a fighting chance to sign the star players. The NBA is going to be stronger when all 30 teams feel like they have a chance to compete on a yearly basis, not when they get lucky in the NBA lottery.
That is why the NFL is so wildly popular. A team like the San Francisco 49ers, a smaller market team, can be a contender. They can attract free agents. They can be profitable.
If somebody has a better plan than this one, I want to hear it. And any NBA owner or GM out there that likes my idea, feel free to call and offer me a job.
