Adrian Wojnarowski @WojYahooNBA Adrian Wojnarowski Y! Sources: NBA owners finally budge with union on long-standing demands for a hard salary cap. Hope? Moe
I think it was clear all along the sides would compromise and agree on a harder cap with more punitive measures for exceeding it. These harsher penalties will have the effect of increasing revenue sharing, which is needed to help competitive balance among the teams. They also better make sure low revenue teams spend the windfall money instead of just pocketing it. The biggest hurdle is agreeing on the BRI split. This might take a while. Once that happens, all else should fall in place.
If the local tv and revenue were evenly split, the hard cap would be a non issue. Because the lakers,knicks,bulls,boston and large cities like that get so much money from local revenue, they don't mind paying the lux tax. If that money were shared, they wouldn't go over the cap. Once again, the owners don't have their house in order.
The players union have already hinted they are willing to negotiate on the BRI percentage but the owners still want the players to come down from 57% to mid 40s. Its a bit too much to give up, closer to 50/50 sounds fair. This is the last remaining hurdle. Personally I dont think they will work it out any time soon. But I didnt think the owners would budge on the hard cap stance so quickly either.
Chris Broussard is reporting that the Owners offered 48% BRI as opposed to the 46% they offered last week.
The flex cap has to happen. If the owners don't push for a real salary cap the super teams will keep being and option for these players.
The percent of their salary that they actually receive. Kobe doesn't actually get $24 million a season. (Well, excluding his sponsorships and other disposable income.
A hard cap creates a more competitive league. As a fan, I don't care how much players or owners earn, Im more interested in the competition. Again, small market teams have trouble competing when all the talent wants to head to the same 4 large market teams. The small market teams then must pay more than what desired destination teams would typically pay. This isn't poor management on the small market clubs, its doing what it takes to create some competition for that club. One of the best solutions is to simply buy out 3 or 4 of the smallest markets
Other reported components of owners' latest proposal: --Players receive 48% of BRI --Luxury tax would become much more punitive (200%???) --Teams can only use Bird rights on one player per season --MLE would be reduced in size and length Something like this (but not that proposed BRI split) is pretty much what I thought would be the end result of negotiations. We'll see how much more each side moves on these issues. Other than BRI (far and away the biggest issue), these proposed changes seem reasonable.
If this is true, an agreement on the BRI is within striking distance. I'll now go on record as predicting there will be an agreement within 2 weeks and no regular season games will be missed. I'm sorry there won't be any pre-season games, but oh well. Edit: BimaThug, after reading your post, I'm feeling good about this. Would be sweet if they reach a tentative agreement today but doubtful.
Sheridan (on his twitter) said that the owners new proposal would have the luxury tax would be $4 to $1.
