A salary cap system that has contributed to the same NBA Finals matchup in four straight seasons was among the topics commissioner Adam Silver addressed Thursday in his annual pre-Finals news conference, relays Steve Aschburner of NBA.com.
The Warriors and Cavaliers have the league’s two highest payrolls, with both topping $137MM. This season’s biggest salaries belong to Golden State’s Stephen Curry at $34.7MM and Cleveland’s LeBron James at $33.3MM.
Amid complaints that having the same two teams meet for the championship every season is harmful to the league, Silver addressed questions on whether a hard salary cap is needed, similar to the NFL’s. The current system allows teams to go over the cap to re-sign their free agents and provides yearly exceptions for teams that elect to use them.
“Now [the hard cap is] something that we’ll continue to look at,” Silver said. “There are pros and cons to doing it. Historically, one of the issues in our league was we didn’t necessarily want to break up teams. There is a different sense in the NBA than the NFL, and the chemistry and dynamic that comes together with a group of players.”
Any changes to the salary cap would have to be negotiated with the players’ union through collective bargaining, Aschburner notes. The year’s cap is set at $99MM, with the luxury tax threshold at $119.2MM.
Silver touched on several other topics during his session with the press:
- He declined to comment on the specifics of the accusations surrounding Sixers executive Bryan Colangelo, noting that the team is conducting an investigation, but acknowledged the charges tarnish the league’s reputation. “Here we are, Game 1 of the Finals,” Silver said. “It’s not necessarily something we want to be talking about.”
- Some gambling enterprises are objecting to a 1% “integrity fee” that Silver hopes to collect through legalized sports betting, but he believes it’s a fair price to compensate the league for intellectual property and its role in preventing fixing scandals.
- Changes could be coming soon to the one-and-done system, with more players opting to enter the G League rather than going to college for one season. “If you have, in essence, college saying, ‘We don’t want these players,’ it would be hard for us not to respond,” Silver said.
- After another year filled with significant player injuries, the NBA will continue to study the benefits of a shorter season, but Silver said action is unlikely without data showing that a 72- or 75-game slate would resolve the problem.
- Despite interest from Seattle and other cities in acquiring an NBA franchise, Silver indicated expansion won’t be coming soon, tweets Ben Golliver of Sport Illustrated. “Expansion is not on our agenda right now,” the commissioner said. “… I’m very focused on creating a competitive 30-team league right now… [Our focus is]: What is it we can do system-wise, training-wise to create more competition within this league?”
I hate caps in all leagues. You want to swim with the big fish, spend with them, or fold. They clearly don’t provide the competitive balance they claim to, all you need to do is look at the entire Western Conference to see that.
Except not all owners have the same amount of money or are willing to budget as much for payroll. Why punish an entire fanbase for that? A hard cap works and it would definitely help the NBA. But I don’t see it happening because it would likely mean leaving money on the table.
A hard cap punishes the fan base more than anything because it doesn’t allow teams to spend enough to keep their teams in tact.
Competitive balance can only be achieved in the NBA by addressing what’s known as NBA hell- when a team is a player away from contention but has neither the necessary cap space or a high enough draft pick to acquire any significant piece
When you give teams like that a chance to get over the hump, it’ll create more parity at the top.
Using a hard cap won’t do much honestly. The issue is really that you have one player (LeBron) who has absolutely dominated a conference for 8 straight years, and that isn’t a cap issue, and that superstars want to play together to increase their chances of winning. Not many players would be able to carry a team to a championship and even those guys need some good role players.
I just hope they don’t shorten the RS to 72-75 games, cannot see the difference. Players get injured for all sorts of reasons, & it has always happened, now they play with a longer season, so more days of rest, less back to backs & all the players play a lot less minutes that they used to just a few years ago, please don’t take the entertainment away from the fans we love our league as long as it is. Also for players without playoff, is not so good to have a shorter season.
Why seems that the NBA wants to mess with everything in these days? shortening the RS, changing the playoff seeding to 1-16 instead of the conferences, eliminating the divisions, doing a tourney to qualify for the playoff, & so on… if it is not broken don’t change it. Fans like it how it is, don’t keep trying to mess with the traditions that we all love & grew with & the rivalries.
What does that idiot Silver know about anything. He meddled in the Sixers business which led to a bigger idiot running the Sixers. Silver was more concerned about the league perception than one team undoing a Billy King disaster and building a bright future.
The entire league salary system is a bad joke. It’s like the left wing extremists version of sports. Let’s regulate and plan everything, and then keep adding regulations until we get the desired result. It’s a joke. Any form of salary restrictions are anti American.
Ten years ago Seattle was robbed of its NBA franchise with no help from then-commissioner David Stern. Now Adam Silver continues to show the city of Seattle that the NBA doesn’t give a shite about Seattle or its people. Steve Balmer…. move the Clippers to Seattle.