This is not to argue that it's not anti-labour, but to add a few points to the discussion:
- League escrow rules mean that ~50% of total basketball related income is paid to players and 10% of all player pay is held until the money is tallied at the end of the season. So in effect when super teams pay out massive contracts to their players, they risk literally taking pay from every player on every other team if BRI can't cover. So, super teams can act as a tax on the rest of the league from a salary perspective.
- These surprisingly low-money deals for rotation guys are likely to even out in the next few years as the existing big money roleplayer contracts expire. There will be a new balance. It's rough right now, but that won't last once the books get cleaned up around the league.
- No one will shed a tear for them, but it's been said for a long time that true stars have been underpaid for years. That's still going to happen with max salaries. But we'll probably see fewer max deals for the second and third tier stars as teams need to pay for depth. Is Jalen Brunson an example of deals to come?
I don't think your first point is true. Contracts are not deducted from BRI. In fact, revenue sharing is specifically excluded from BRI because the scenario you describe would actually drive BRI up (teams paying out disbursements for going over the salary cap) and thus raise the floor/cap for everyone.
I admit I could be wrong, but the point I'm making is this: The players take half the pie. Say you have two equally skilled players and Player A is paid 10M and Player B is paid 15M by a rich team. Each Player has 10% of his earnings held in escrow, but now the league has to make 50M in BRI (25M x2) for the players to be paid their full contracts. If not, they both lose money but player A is made worse off because his smaller slice of the pie was diluted by the bigger contracts. Play that out over ~450 contracts. In fairness, you could also argue that the rich teams raise the market rate for everyone though. I just find it interesting that a 'guaranteed' contract isn't as guaranteed as we might think.
I don't definitively disagree, but I'm not sure that these points translate into the cap being anti-labor. Let's say that the apron/cap, plus the other changes you've described, limit player movement (the core of teams generally stay together longer), while breaking up the best and most expensive teams (which increases parity). If the player's union concluded that an NBA with pretty consistent team identities and pretty high levels of parity was going to generate the most basketball related income, wouldn't it be pro-labor for them to agree to these rules and increase the pie?
I'm not saying that's what's going on. And there's absolutely more to the players' interest than just higher salaries. But labor is a collective by definition, and labor can look at an industry like professional basketball and rationally conclude "we are willing to adopt the following restrictions on our individual choices because we think they'll grow the league, and thus our material wellbeing."
I read this article right after reading about the NWSL negotiations which are super favorable to players in a way we never see in the US. This is probably how it should be though no draft and fewer trades might be less fun for fans (and might require fewer members of the media to cover?). https://x.com/TomKludt/status/1826585759685464147
But if the goal is to reduce player movement, then allowing players to play where they want from entry to the league onwards is the right way to do it.
The NBA has effectively almost totally abolished the middle class, much like the broader economy in general. It seems like the LeBron/CP3 type players have had all the union power over the last decade, so they've created a system that funnels all the money up to the aging superstar, who get these huge albatross contracts in their 30s. A smoothing out of the salary scale might help, but obviously you can't get rid of caps or you've got an MLB/wild West situation that would be much worse. This delicate dance between labor, economics, art, entertainment, and freedom is incredibly interesting!
While cap hardening might be a little bit anti-labor, I think there are two other very important factors:
1) League competitiveness and balance is essential for the money machine that gets these players paid. That needs to be legislated somehow and various versions of still-soft salary caps are one way. Otherwise, you end up with five cities that have competitive teams and 25 with fanbases that slowly give up - baseball has had this problem and you can see how it's eroding the future fanbase.
2) The rest of our nation is at-will employment, pretty much the law of the land. The NBA is on fully-guaranteed contracts. It is the norm that if your employees underperform their salaries you can let them go. Also, those employees can quit if they're unhappy.
In the NBA, the players have the right to demand trades or threaten to if the team doesn't make certain moves (seems like half the stars in the league) or simply withhold effort (Harden, Ben Simmons, Kyrie, et al) if they want to. The teams don't have any rights. This also disrupts competitive balance. So, in this way, the NBA is pro-labor to its own detriment.
I think it would be wiser to focus on the core challenge of generating compelling games all year and in the playoffs more than on which teams are limited from spending ~$10m more in luxury tax. The net dollar amount you're talking about is negligible compared to whether the league can put forth a compelling product that can start to compete with the NFL.
I’m not exactly a mathematician, and I don’t pretend to understand even a small fraction of the NBA cap/apron system, but if (using a hypothetical and oversimplified example) a team is willing to have a payroll of $500M in pursuit of a championship but can only spend, say, $350M, while all other teams stay at $350M, why isn’t total player compensation reduced by $150M? I assume that if that team were allowed to spend the $500M, the other teams wouldn’t be required to spend less than $350M, right? Someone please explain!
The NBAPA gives the illusion of being a strong union, but until they hire someone with serious experience as a labor negotiator, they will be run over by the bosses. Same as in the other sports. Marty Walsh is a lot more qualified than Iggy.
The union seems to be dominated by the biggest stars. I'd love to believe that all members actually vote for what benefits the superstars against their own interests, but I've seen nothing to indicate this is actually the case.
That may indeed be the case. It may also be that the non-stars of the league look up to the stars with the same reverence (or even hero worship) that fans do.
In any case, the biggest stars have the biggest clout.
This is not to argue that it's not anti-labour, but to add a few points to the discussion:
- League escrow rules mean that ~50% of total basketball related income is paid to players and 10% of all player pay is held until the money is tallied at the end of the season. So in effect when super teams pay out massive contracts to their players, they risk literally taking pay from every player on every other team if BRI can't cover. So, super teams can act as a tax on the rest of the league from a salary perspective.
- These surprisingly low-money deals for rotation guys are likely to even out in the next few years as the existing big money roleplayer contracts expire. There will be a new balance. It's rough right now, but that won't last once the books get cleaned up around the league.
- No one will shed a tear for them, but it's been said for a long time that true stars have been underpaid for years. That's still going to happen with max salaries. But we'll probably see fewer max deals for the second and third tier stars as teams need to pay for depth. Is Jalen Brunson an example of deals to come?
I don't think your first point is true. Contracts are not deducted from BRI. In fact, revenue sharing is specifically excluded from BRI because the scenario you describe would actually drive BRI up (teams paying out disbursements for going over the salary cap) and thus raise the floor/cap for everyone.
I admit I could be wrong, but the point I'm making is this: The players take half the pie. Say you have two equally skilled players and Player A is paid 10M and Player B is paid 15M by a rich team. Each Player has 10% of his earnings held in escrow, but now the league has to make 50M in BRI (25M x2) for the players to be paid their full contracts. If not, they both lose money but player A is made worse off because his smaller slice of the pie was diluted by the bigger contracts. Play that out over ~450 contracts. In fairness, you could also argue that the rich teams raise the market rate for everyone though. I just find it interesting that a 'guaranteed' contract isn't as guaranteed as we might think.
I don't definitively disagree, but I'm not sure that these points translate into the cap being anti-labor. Let's say that the apron/cap, plus the other changes you've described, limit player movement (the core of teams generally stay together longer), while breaking up the best and most expensive teams (which increases parity). If the player's union concluded that an NBA with pretty consistent team identities and pretty high levels of parity was going to generate the most basketball related income, wouldn't it be pro-labor for them to agree to these rules and increase the pie?
I'm not saying that's what's going on. And there's absolutely more to the players' interest than just higher salaries. But labor is a collective by definition, and labor can look at an industry like professional basketball and rationally conclude "we are willing to adopt the following restrictions on our individual choices because we think they'll grow the league, and thus our material wellbeing."
I read this article right after reading about the NWSL negotiations which are super favorable to players in a way we never see in the US. This is probably how it should be though no draft and fewer trades might be less fun for fans (and might require fewer members of the media to cover?). https://x.com/TomKludt/status/1826585759685464147
But if the goal is to reduce player movement, then allowing players to play where they want from entry to the league onwards is the right way to do it.
The NBA has effectively almost totally abolished the middle class, much like the broader economy in general. It seems like the LeBron/CP3 type players have had all the union power over the last decade, so they've created a system that funnels all the money up to the aging superstar, who get these huge albatross contracts in their 30s. A smoothing out of the salary scale might help, but obviously you can't get rid of caps or you've got an MLB/wild West situation that would be much worse. This delicate dance between labor, economics, art, entertainment, and freedom is incredibly interesting!
While cap hardening might be a little bit anti-labor, I think there are two other very important factors:
1) League competitiveness and balance is essential for the money machine that gets these players paid. That needs to be legislated somehow and various versions of still-soft salary caps are one way. Otherwise, you end up with five cities that have competitive teams and 25 with fanbases that slowly give up - baseball has had this problem and you can see how it's eroding the future fanbase.
2) The rest of our nation is at-will employment, pretty much the law of the land. The NBA is on fully-guaranteed contracts. It is the norm that if your employees underperform their salaries you can let them go. Also, those employees can quit if they're unhappy.
In the NBA, the players have the right to demand trades or threaten to if the team doesn't make certain moves (seems like half the stars in the league) or simply withhold effort (Harden, Ben Simmons, Kyrie, et al) if they want to. The teams don't have any rights. This also disrupts competitive balance. So, in this way, the NBA is pro-labor to its own detriment.
I think it would be wiser to focus on the core challenge of generating compelling games all year and in the playoffs more than on which teams are limited from spending ~$10m more in luxury tax. The net dollar amount you're talking about is negligible compared to whether the league can put forth a compelling product that can start to compete with the NFL.
I’m not exactly a mathematician, and I don’t pretend to understand even a small fraction of the NBA cap/apron system, but if (using a hypothetical and oversimplified example) a team is willing to have a payroll of $500M in pursuit of a championship but can only spend, say, $350M, while all other teams stay at $350M, why isn’t total player compensation reduced by $150M? I assume that if that team were allowed to spend the $500M, the other teams wouldn’t be required to spend less than $350M, right? Someone please explain!
The NBAPA gives the illusion of being a strong union, but until they hire someone with serious experience as a labor negotiator, they will be run over by the bosses. Same as in the other sports. Marty Walsh is a lot more qualified than Iggy.
The union seems to be dominated by the biggest stars. I'd love to believe that all members actually vote for what benefits the superstars against their own interests, but I've seen nothing to indicate this is actually the case.
It may be a corollary to Steinbeck's wisdom that Americans don't think of themselves as poor, merely as temporarily embarrassed millionaires.
I'm not an end of the bench guy. I'm a temporarily embarrassed Hall of Famer.
That may indeed be the case. It may also be that the non-stars of the league look up to the stars with the same reverence (or even hero worship) that fans do.
In any case, the biggest stars have the biggest clout.