Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, step right up and
witness as The Great Roberno solves the National Basketball
Association’s most daunting problem. Behold the world’s greatest
sports magician and his epic struggle against a beast that
threatens to tear the very league apart!!!!
What is the fearsome creature that threatens the very fabric of
the world’s favorite sport? (All right, maybe that’s really soccer,
but this is America, damn it, and MLS isn’t that big yet!) Despite
what you might think, the biggest problem facing the NBA has
nothing to do with this summer’s free agent mass-migration.
Instead, the real danger is all these damn kids running around the
league when they should be running around a college campus
somewhere.
Doom and gloom predictions not withstanding, the mega-contracts
being tossed around this off season will neither bring economic
ruin to the league, result in massive yearly player migrations, nor
necessarily continue. Player contracts are regulated by the salary
cap, which is determined by the league’s yearly revenue. Despite
the fact that the NBA has a "soft cap," one which allows teams to
exceed the cap in order to resign their own free-agents, it
nevertheless keeps team budgets down by restricting their ability
to sign players from other clubs.
This off-season’s contracts were caused by a combination of
numerous big-name free agents unexpectedly hitting the market due
to changes in the new collective borrowing agreement and an
unprecedented increase in the salary cap this season. Without a
similar hike in the cap, most teams will not have the space to fit
an entire $10 million annual salary under it. The result should be
that players motivated chiefly by money will remain with their
current teams, since they can offer them far larger salaries. Even
these salaries should be lower, since there will be less outside
competition driving up the bidding for their services.
As a result, the majority of movement will come from Danny
Manning-type players; those willing to accept less money in order
to play for a contender.
The real problem is the increasing number of underclassmen
entering the league before they are ready. Every year more and more
players are opting for the draft rather than staying in college (or
even going to college, for that matter), and teams continue to take
them based not on what they have shown they can do, but rather,
what they might someday do. Many of them, despite considerable
talent, are simply not ready for this level.
Underclassmen who might have been stars, instead become marginal
players (or worse) because their NBA coaches simply don’t have the
time to teach them how to play. Those who can pick it up on their
own, succeed. Those who can’t, fail. College coaches, with at most
two or three games a week, not only have the time to teach the
basics of the game, they also have the advantage of greater
authority over their players. An NBA player making $5 million a
season can blow off his $250,000 coach, but a college player who
tries it can watch his career come to a screeching halt.
And make no mistake, the NBA wants most players to stay in
school. College basketball serves as a free minor league, saving
the NBA untold millions every year.
A year ago, the league’s solution was to impose a hard rookie
salary cap that would designate players’ salaries for their first
three seasons, the idea being that lower salaries would be less of
a temptation. Nice try, but wrong.
It now appears that the rookie cap has actually had the
completely opposite effect. The number of underclassmen applying
for the draft skyrocketed this year as sophomores, freshmen and
high-schoolers rushed to get those first three years out of the way
and reach the promised land of bigger contracts that much sooner.
Rather than keeping players in school, the rookie cap is pushing
them out even faster than before.
Obviously, that was not the answer.
My solution? Simple, reward them for staying in school. Fix the
salary of underclassmen, regardless of draft position, to the
league minimum until their class would have graduated. The
difference between the $247,500 a sophomore No.1 would receive and
nearly $3 million his senior counterpart would get should be enough
to keep any underclassman with a calculator in school until the
end.
Furthermore, the league could make the length of rookie
contracts adjustable so players become free agents three years
after their class graduates rather than three years after they
enter the league. In other words, a player who leaves after his
junior year would have to wait for four years before becoming a
free agent, a sophomore for five years, etc. Coming out early would
no longer give a player a jump on the big bucks.
Either of these steps would almost certainly help ebb the tide
of unprepared undergrads (some of them younger than us, for
Christ’s sake) pouring into the league each year. A combination of
the two should stop it completely.
Like magic.