Long-term viability and short-term versatility

Free Agency presents challenges for every team: maintaining talent and managing cap flexibility. I think an interesting trend has been the number of short term contracts given out to free agents this offseason. Teams have shifted their signing practices to adapt to salary cap taxes and players seeking destinations for themselves.

There's not a lot of money in the free agency market as of right now. Much of it dried up 2 years ago when we witnessed that huge salary cap increase when teams were signing players to outrageous contracts. Now, notable players are getting 1-year contracts. Some may not even be getting offers at all (Smart comes to mind).

I think it'll be interesting to see how free agency plays out over the next few years, taking into account the age of super teams, super max contracts, and the dreaded luxury repeater tax. Will the NBA seek to adjust the CBA to prevent another Golden State?


KJ

Golden State became a great team because they drafted Curry, Thompson and Green

Adding Durant seemed way over the top for a team that won 73 games the season before.

And getting Cousins just adds insult to injury.

There is an arms war going on and a lot of teams are in it.

Seems that whenever the CBA makes rule changes some team finds a way around the rule.

What if you put in place a rule that states a free agent that has been offered a new contract cannot decline that offer and sign with another team if the the amount of the contract is less than 50% of what was offered (By NOLA). So in that situation a team like Golden State would not be able to sign Cousins for less than $10 million. And since they are over the CAP it would prevent them from signing Cousins.

hard cap with one franchise player exception per team each year, as I have said before.

the NBA and Players association can make the numbers work so that players get the same money as today.

setting the hard cap minimum to a very high % of the cap (say 90%) would discourage some of the low ball tanking a bit also.

but you know what IF a player wants to play for peanuts on a certain team, there isn't really much that can be done to stop that.