See What Happens When The Local Team Was 7-59

That's why the NBA needs a hard cap like the NFL, but f'd up to try to squeeze in a shit shortened season.

 

the trouble with the miami dream team is that the players orchestrated it. they're 3 of the top 10-15 players in the league all in their prime (well, maybe wade's lost a step).

 

Why? Every sport has free agency, and most champions have several key free agents signed from elsewhere.

It wouldn't matter. You can only go above the cap to re-sign your own free agents. Miami got far enough under the "real" cap to bring in Bosh & James, who took less than max to sign there.

 

They just seemed to have benefited from it more than they should have. Like MJ said when this happened, he never thought about getting together with Magic, Bird and Barkely and signing up with the same team so they could win it all. He wanted to beat those other guys not join them.

 

an nba team has 15 roster slots and generally maybe 10 guys get pt during a season. in the playoffs that usually shrinks down to something more like 8. each individual player represents such a larger portion of the team. indeed, miami actually spent the previous seasons jettisoning nearly everybody else simply to get cap space to land 3 max players.

it's not like miami was a top team and attracted an elite player to help round out their roster. they were a crap team that simply created the right circumstances that allowed three of the best players in the league to create their own superteam.

that's not true at all. if you're over the cap, you get the mid level exception to spend. plus you can sign any number of people at the veteran minimum. miami's salary is $80m for this year. they are like $22 million over the cap already.

and also, technically speaking, they didn't sign james and bosh as free agents. they were signed and traded from their original teams as a means to at least get something of value from them leaving. personally, i think there should be some kind of automated means to compensate teams that lose free agents that doesn't directly benefit the person leaving.

for example, if lebron had signed as a free agent, his contract would have been limited to 5 years and his raises would have been locked in at 8%. but since he was officially "re-signed" by cleveland, he got 6 years with 10.5% raises. cleveland HAD to do a sign-and-trade if they wanted to get a trade exemption out of the deal. they also got 2 firsts and 2 second round picks. doubtful those picks will amount to much unless miami flames out.

 

He didn't have to because he already had Pippen, but the Bulls did sign key free agents like Rodman, Bill Cartwright, Steve Kerr, etc.

 

Still not the same thing in my mind. It is not good for the league for the best players to be able to join up on the same team and leave teams like Cleveland and Toronto in the basement.

 

If this series were two small-market teams, nobody outside those cities would give a flying fuck about it. Having Miami and LaBrawn in it was the only reason non-NBA fans like me even paid attention.

 

particularly since rodman and cartwright weren't free agents -- they were acquired via trade. in cartwright's case, the bulls gave up charles oakley. in rodman's case, they traded will purdue. but more importantly, it wasn't like those guys decided to come to chicago to play with michael jordan. kerr did, sure, but nobody's really complaining about mike miller signing with the heat.

 

You'd rather the player not have any freedom and have to spend their career playing for schlub teams?