Is convincing stars to take pay cuts becoming a necessary part of building a championship team?

There isn't too much money. People just haven't adjusted to the new normal because the salary explosion was so sudden. The last couple of summers have been crazy but we should have seen it coming. Two years ago, a $100 million salary cap was projected by many (up from $63 million) and here we have it.

I'm curious to see if other top 5 megastars will follow KD's example and accept less money to increase their chance of winning.

IMO, one solution to the "perversion" (which is a very dumb way of phrasing it) is to eliminate the per player max salary. This is the real perversion that exists.

 

honestly I think this is a big part of it. you pay people what they're worth and what the market will bear

 

I think it would eliminate any top 10 players from being on the same team, by choice. The Miami Heat trio never would have happened and KD would not be on the Warriors.

 

Gotcha - and yeah, it's a good question. I will say that, as someone said earlier, this isn't necessarily new or unique. Tim Duncan has done this with the Spurs to help keep championship rosters together in the past, but yes, it's mostly been considered an outlier, whereas now it may be becoming more common.

I would argue part of this is the sheer insanity of the cap rise last year. Taking a discount on a max contract 2 years ago when everyone was getting paid like you is one thing. But taking a discount when you're a free agent now and the numbers are just so much bigger seems like less of a big deal / sacrifice, given how many people are still on the older scale.

It does sort of blow up the whole economic structure that the NBA is built around (as do max contracts in general). It would be interesting, from a parity perspective, if they gave the crappiest teams larger salary caps than the best teams. That would help diversify talent to the crappier teams and make it hard for good teams to stay together (everyone would have to take bigger discounts). It won't happen, of course, but it's an economic solution to the lack of parity issue.

 

The NBA really turned into mid 90s WCW.
You have the NWO (Heat then Cavs) and the NWO wolfpack (Warriors). Then you have the WCW (everyone besides the Kings/Pacers and most of the East). Those teams are like the Saturday night show were Glacier would fight Hugh Morris.

 

He isn't the only one stacking the deck though even Cp3 stacked the deck and like I said other players in history had stacked the deck too. He isn't even the player who gave up the most I remember David West took like a 90% paycut of his salary to play for a contender.

The NBA lived through all those guys they'll live through KD too. Were you frustrated when Lakers got a 3peat with Shaq and Kobe? How about when MJ won 2 3 peats? Kd has just 1 ring yet you are going crazy already lol. MJ beat up the league even worse than KD Warriors now did, they even set the regular season record for wins.

 

or the Celtics in the 60s . . . didn't they win something like seven straight titles?

 

Exactly. Lets wait for KD to establish a dynasty before everyone flips out lol.

I think the diff with today's technology and social media to the old days is everyone has the tendency to be too dramatic about things. 1 ring and the league is destroyed wtf.

Every thing that happens people always act like the world is ending, just look at all the posts about Harden in game 6. Yet all those posters act like nothing has happened now.

 

which is saying something as I've been told I'm the dumbest a-hole around here

 

I would suggest doing away with bird rights/exceptions and allow one player per team to earn over up to 50% of max individual contract, in which that extra 50% did not count against salary cap. If a team anchors themselves to a 50M per year player (only 35M counting towards salary cap), then that player could only be traded to a team that could absorb the whole 50M under their salary cap or did not have a designated player. This would encourage the greed of superstars to not pile up on one team and dissipate the talent to other teams.

 

Don't know what the problem is with KD. Yes, his "discount" saves the GSW owners a lot of money. They could have paid him (up to his non-Bird $) and sign the same guys if they were just willing to pay tax. Maybe they were not willing to do it and we think KD should have forced them to pay up.

The question is, though: What if the owners just aren't willing to pay more than, say, $210M or whatever it is for a roster? What's KD's alternative? Go to another team? A bunch of them would pay him, of course, but which of them offer the same level of roster talent around him? Will other owners be willing to spend more than GSW's? Will these teams have the same talent even while spending more than GSW?

KD has a lot of leverage and options in this case. But eve he does not have unlimited leverage.

 

Should have met me at the greenbelt this weekend bruh