Craig wrote:
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joey_hesketh wrote:
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Brandon wrote:
Bold #1: Agreed, in this model it may be as easy as Lebron to get other all-stars on his team than Paul.
Bold #2: Removing all luxury tax/salary cap/other restrictions doesn't limit Lebron's choices. In fact, it gives him more choices. He can sign with any team, they don't have to worry about whether they allowed to sign him (due to restrictions) they only worry about whether they are willing to pay him the amount he wants. You assume (and perhaps I'm projecting incorrectly) that the number one concern for Lebron is money in the bank from an NBA salary. I would argue that although it is entirely possible that overall money in the bank is Lebron's overall goal, winning championships might be more important than money received in basketball salary, for two reasons. First, a pay cut in salary that would allow him to win a championship, might could actually net him more money in the long run because of an increase in value of his "brand". Second, even if taking a pay cut in his basketball salary means he is going to make less overall in the course of his career/life. It is also entirely possible (even from an economic "homo econimus"/rational man, perspective that he values winning a championship over the money. In this sense winning a championship comes at a cost of x amount of dollars in salary left on the table, a cost that he is entirely willing to pay. BUT let's say that he goes where the money is, in a completely free market NBA (which does not and cannot exist because you and I can't just start up an NBA team [even if we had unlimited funds]) it is no less likely that Lebron ends up with 3 other superstars than our current model. Pokorhov basically just gave the finger to the salary tax restrictions (something that I personally don't think will be something he does for more than 3-5 years, and something no other owner we'll ever do again). I failed to see where your argument of a completely "free" market in the NBA benefitted small market teams. Unless it somehow involved even more radical changes that happen in soccer, if that's the case you should expand on HOW changing to a free market and adopting soccer policies will result in making small market teams more successful, because I am completely missing something.
Fourth bold: I think this is a very simplistic sentence. There are a LOT of economists including ADAM SMITH who pointed out ways that markets, left to their own devices would not work. ALSO there are plenty of instances of gov'ts using the rhetoric of "free markets" to reinforce a power hierarchy that runs contrary to an actual free market. For example, "The North"'s double standard of calling for free trade and the removal of subsidies in "The South", but then HEAVILY subsidizing their own local agriculture. I'm not saying that they are right or wrong for doing it, because the conflation of economics and politics is extremely complex, just that people often call for "free markets" when the result is good for them, but against "free markets" when it is bad for them. The idea that actively choosing to not have a free market is a choice that only a non-economist could make is inaccurate.
To me the way you increase the ability of a small market team's ability to compete (from an economic perspective) is to remove caps on players salaries BUT inserting a HARD CAP. This forces teams to make hard decisions... is it better have 1 lebron and 4 steve novak's or the raptors current starting five? Small market teams would lose the ability to gain the transcendant star in their prime, but would have an advantage in being able to afford more borderline/perennial all-star types.
From what I've read, the result of this would be a huge gap of haves or have nots. Salary cap on players essentially works out as a subsidy for the Landry Fields of the league. Even if owners were all for a completely free market, or a free market with a hard cap, in reality, the players union would have to be on board and that is tough sledding.
Regardless of the system, players are always going to have the option to accept less money to increase their chances of getting a ring, and although we see this almost exclusive with aging veterans, there is nothing stopping a super-duper star/generational talent to take less money order for his team to have a better chance to win it all. I believe Lebron and Bosh took pay cuts to get into Miami, and there's nothing a free market can do about that, and very little a regulation market can do about it as well.
Lasty, using Lebron as an example of how the current model doesn't work, may be accurate, and still misguided. Lebron is a once in a lifetime generational talent, an arguable and legitimate contender for GOAT. In terms of basket-ball players he is the outlier of outliers, and I would argue that the philosophy of utility would suggest that designing a model of compensation surrounding the vast majority of players as opposed to the once very 10-20 year generational talents is the more prudent approach. I'm not saying the model we have is that model, but the idea that Lebron is evidence of why the whole salary compensation structure should be thrown out the window, is not best rational.
However, I am interested in hearing more expansion on your ideas of how to change NBA salaries to make small market teams more competitive.
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