The thrust of Adam Silver's state-of-the-offseason media session this past week in Las Vegas could not have been clearer: the NBA is less of a product, as a whole, when an overwhelming amount of elite talent is concentrated among so few teams.
As in, of course, the colossus that is the Golden State Warriors of Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, Klay Thomson and Draymond Green, or the power trio of LeBron James, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love that might make championships more than the exception for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
"I think it is critically important," the NBA commissioner said, "that fans in every market have that belief that if their team is well-managed that they can compete."
And yet it is the NBA, itself, with its collective-bargaining agreement, that has unlocked the possibility of teams having as many as three elite players and possibly even more.
Because that's what happens when you have a maximum salary for individual players.
Currently the CBA defines the maximum individual salary as 25 percent of the overall salary cap for players with six or few seasons of experience, 30 percent of the overall cap for those with seven to nine years of NBA tenure, and then 35 percent for those in the league 10 or more years.
With the various exceptions built into the NBA soft salary cap, you don't need advanced math to see the possibilities for two or three elite players per team.
But what if there wasn't a maximum salary, what if the cutoff for this coming season, for example, wasn't $32 million? What if it was whatever a team determined it should be for each specific player?
Forget three superstars on a team. Try fitting in even two with salaries of $50 million, $60 million or perhaps even higher.
Want 30 superstars with 30 different teams? Remove the maximum individual salary, while keeping the overall salary cap in place.
The players' union, especially the rank-and-file, surely would want no part of such a squeeze, with so little left over for so many. Except, of course, if you also significantly raise the minimum salary. Then there certainly would be a lot more smiling faces when it comes to voting for such change.
Bottom line: Isn't the essence of the NBA the star player? Isn't that who fans come to see? Isn't that what the NBA has always sold?
Is it any different than movie stars who earn an inordinate share (Kevin Hart, $87 million this past year according to Forbes)? Musicians (Taylor Swift, $170 million)? Authors (James Patterson, $95 million)?
The difference is there is no union, or at least salary-restrictive union, among actors, musicians, authors. Market demand (even if at time inexplicable) rules.
It is the very rank-and-file of the National Basketball Players Association that routinely fights age limits for entry into the NBA, even though those very rank-and-file members are the ones who therefore could be losing their jobs to a new wave of preps-to-pros talent.
The greatest risk with a no-maximum rule for salaries would be players who suffer devastating injuries or illnesses. The counter would be to limit the number of years on such contracts, perhaps where a team could either drop such a contract at the end of a season or negotiate such a salary downward (currently downward renegotiations are not allowed in the NBA's agreement).
Such a system would allow the pool of "elites" to be reconfigured on a regular basis, somewhat along the lines of a Dwyane Wade out and a DeMar DeRozan in.
Instead, the NBA has reached a point where so many players are reaching for (and attaining) the artificial maximum salary that it's difficult to recognize who's a maximum player anymore: Mike Conley? Bradley Beal? Nicolas Batum? Chandler Parsons?
Allow for something as basic as the market determining true value among the elite of the elite and competitive balance would become the natural outcome. LeBron and the merry minimums.
Sports on 07/18/2016