The Players are taking over the League. Is it bad.

[JohnBoy65]

Lol what? The league has to prevent KD from taking less than he's worth to keep his team together? You guys have gone certifiably crazy!

Your Patriots have been doing this for years. Players signing for less to keep the team alive. ( I am from NY so I love getting a jab in on the Patriots whenever possible  )

[nickagneta]

This CBA caused two things:

The first part is extraordinary cap space for every team in the league for a couple of years which allowed for a couple of superteams to be created and a lot of bad to mediocre teams giving bad contracts to undeserving players

The second part is yet to come. That would be the correction of part one because of the luxury tax. Superteams will not be sustainable once the salary cap levels off. Team owners don't want to pay tens of millions in luxury tax and lose money year after year. Those superteams will be dissolved and parity will come. We are just one to two years away from that happening.

[Fan from VT]

I think the collective "we" are to blame too. Pounding the table, talking about how titles are the be-all-end-all of being a "great" player. Players hear that too, figure they gotta win a title.

[JohnBoy65]

I think the collective "we" are to blame too. Pounding the table, talking about how titles are the be-all-end-all of being a "great" player. Players hear that too, figure they gotta win a title.

Yep. Spot on. We're in a spot where everyone knows Jordan was 6-0 and LeBron was 3-5. Championships are all that matter to people now-a-days. Then on the flip side when Carmelo wanted to stay somewhere that he and his family were happy at he got bashed like crazy because he didn't care about winning.

[celticsclay]

I think the collective "we" are to blame too. Pounding the table, talking about how titles are the be-all-end-all of being a "great" player. Players hear that too, figure they gotta win a title.

Yep. Spot on. We're in a spot where everyone knows Jordan was 6-0 and LeBron was 3-5. Championships are all that matter to people now-a-days. Then on the flip side when Carmelo wanted to stay somewhere that he and his family were happy at he got bashed like crazy because he didn't care about winning.

Lebron would have a better record in the finals if he was as good as Jordan.

[Boris Badenov]

This CBA caused two things:

The first part is extraordinary cap space for every team in the league for a couple of years which allowed for a couple of superteams to be created and a lot of bad to mediocre teams giving bad contracts to undeserving players

The second part is yet to come. That would be the correction of part one because of the luxury tax. Superteams will not be sustainable once the salary cap levels off. Team owners don't want to pay tens of millions in luxury tax and lose money year after year. Those superteams will be dissolved and parity will come. We are just one to two years away from that happening.

I was thinking the same thing. We are in the first two years of a new and disruptive CBA. The league effed up the transition, and we are seeing the downside, but things should settle down.

[Moranis]

I think the collective "we" are to blame too. Pounding the table, talking about how titles are the be-all-end-all of being a "great" player. Players hear that too, figure they gotta win a title.

Yep. Spot on. We're in a spot where everyone knows Jordan was 6-0 and LeBron was 3-5. Championships are all that matter to people now-a-days. Then on the flip side when Carmelo wanted to stay somewhere that he and his family were happy at he got bashed like crazy because he didn't care about winning.

Lebron would have a better record in the finals if he was as good as Jordan.

or if he played a bunch of crappy teams like Jordan did?  Jordan didn't face a team anywhere near as good as the last 3 Warriors teams, or the two Spurs teams before that (or the first Finals for James), or that Thunder team (which essentially had 3 MVP level players just entering their prime).  The only team James played in the Finals that was worse than the teams Jordan's Bulls were playing in the Finals, was the Mavericks, and James really has no excuse there.  That is a bad loss, but let's not go crazy with the pretty poor and very top heavy teams (i.e. no real depth) that the Bulls were beating the Finals.  I mean the 3rd best player on the last 3Peat teams were 33 year old Detlef Schrempf and Bryon Russell (or Jeff Hornacek).  the first 3Peat, Dan Majerle was the Suns 3rd best player, the Blazers 2nd best player was Terry Porter and 3rd best was Jerome Kersey, at least the Lakers had Divac as their 3rd best player (of course he was in his 2nd year and averaged 10/8 during the season).  These aren't exactly world beaters as 3rd options, especially when you start looking at teams that have Klay Thompson or Draymond Green as a 3rd option, or Tony Parker with Manu Ginobili as the 4th, or James Harden as a 3rd option. 

Also, last time I checked 8 was bigger than 6 and 8 of 14 is way better than 6 of 15.  Do we just give Jordan a pass for the 9 seasons he didn't even make the Finals?

[KGs Knee]

This CBA caused two things:

The first part is extraordinary cap space for every team in the league for a couple of years which allowed for a couple of superteams to be created and a lot of bad to mediocre teams giving bad contracts to undeserving players

The second part is yet to come. That would be the correction of part one because of the luxury tax. Superteams will not be sustainable once the salary cap levels off. Team owners don't want to pay tens of millions in luxury tax and lose money year after year. Those superteams will be dissolved and parity will come. We are just one to two years away from that happening.

I was thinking the same thing. We are in the first two years of a new and disruptive CBA. The league effed up the transition, and we are seeing the downside, but things should settle down.

I'm not sure the league could have done much to prevent it.  They tried and the union rejected their attempts at cap smoothing.  The players wanted their fair share of the money, and they didn't want to wait for it.

[Ilikesports17]

Lol what? The league has to prevent KD from taking less than he's worth to keep his team together? You guys have gone certifiably crazy!

Your Patriots have been doing this for years. Players signing for less to keep the team alive. ( I am from NY so I love getting a jab in on the Patriots whenever possible  )

I think it's a bit different because there is no max contract in the NFL.

[mmmmm]

There will be the least playoff games since at least 2003 this series.
The league loses money when this happens and the salary cap could go down over a million dollars from the playoffs alone for next season

I think the low number of playoff games has more to do with bad injury luck than with the user-dominance of GSW and CLE.

If Leonard and Parker do not go down to injury, I doubt that GSW arrives in the Finals at 12-0.

If Lowry and Thomas are not injured, I'm extremely doubtful that CLE arrives in the finals at 12-1.

Certainly, I'd still consider each to be favorites to come out of their respective conferences.  But against healthy competition, I think both would have lost at least a couple of games that they did not.

CLE also had the fortune to play teams that were, either through injury (Lowry & Thomas) or roster (IND) seriously sub-par offensively.   None of those teams presented them with a challenge for their otherwise 21st-ranked defense.   So CLE looked a heck of a lot more dominant than they really were.   

GSW then promptly exposed Cleveland's 21st-ranked defense for what it was.

Are GSW & CLE good?  Certainly.  GSW is clearly the best team in the league.

But I personally would put the brakes on anointing them as one of the greatest teams in history just yet.

[mmmmm]

It's so funny all the people that bash on Durant. If he stays in OKC people talk about him as someone who 'doesn't care about winning' or 'he'll never win with Westbrook!'. In an era that we rate players based on the number of championships they have KD went to a place where he can win the most championships, but that somehow was the wrong move. I don't get it.

Durant winning the championship this year, is equivalent to kids getting trophies for participating in a sports league. Neither one feels earned. Don't fool yourself into thinking Durant's championship is on par with a title that Jordan, Bird, or Magic won. Durant's championship feels like a Robert Horry title, where they were both there for the ride.

I don't understand this mindset that a player can't be considered great if he doesn't win a championship. Charles Barkley never won a title, and I still consider him to be one of the greatest players that I have ever seen. Of the players on Golden State and Cleveland, I would take Barkley over everybody except LeBron.

Since when do we decide which championship was harder to win? Durant seems to have one goal in the NBA and that's to win championships. Hate to break it to you, but Durant's championship is just like anyone else's.

After the game last night one of the first things I saw on twitter was comparing Jordan's final record to LeBron's. I agree with you it's not the only way to evaluate legacy, but for the average fan that's what they base it off. KD got a max contract from the best team in the league, why the hell wouldn't he take that?

Well lets see if KD will be true to his word..he said he will take less than the max in order for the Warriors to keep the band together. Personally I dont think the league should allow it.

The imposition of the supermax will be for naught if the league would allow Curry and KD to coexists on less than their value despite both being eligible for it.

This league is a joke right now and frankly it should just be trimmed to 25 teams so everyone can form the best team possible with talent not being watered down.

Waitaminute.   Wasn't this 'okay' for Lebron & Bosh to take sub-max contracts in order to join with Wade in Miami?   Should the NBA have stepped in and disallowed that?

If you want players to be paid their true value then you'll have to remove max contracts and go to more of a model like ML Baseball uses.  In which case the only teams that win consistently will be the richest, major-market teams.

Or if you just can't stand the notion that players should have any control over their lives, we could just switch to an NFL-like model where the players are mostly just pawns to chewed up and spit out by the teams.

[Kaz]

Kevin Durant signing with Golden State was one of the biggest punk moves that I have ever seen. There is only one person to blame for this, and that is Kelly Olynyk. If Olynyk doesn't dislocate Kevin Love's shoulder, then Cleveland may have won back-to-back titles. Maybe Golden State then doesn't have that champion mindset last year, when they came back from a 3-1 deficit against Oklahoma City. To top it off, maybe Danny's sale pitch to Durant would have had a different result. [dang] you Olynyk with how you changed the basketball landscape for years to come  .

Well Kyrie got injured later in the finals anyways, and the Dubs would still handle the Kyrie-less Cavs with or without Love 

[Snakehead]

I think the league should step in to prevent a Warriors situation.  It's over the top.

[KGs Knee]

It's so funny all the people that bash on Durant. If he stays in OKC people talk about him as someone who 'doesn't care about winning' or 'he'll never win with Westbrook!'. In an era that we rate players based on the number of championships they have KD went to a place where he can win the most championships, but that somehow was the wrong move. I don't get it.

Durant winning the championship this year, is equivalent to kids getting trophies for participating in a sports league. Neither one feels earned. Don't fool yourself into thinking Durant's championship is on par with a title that Jordan, Bird, or Magic won. Durant's championship feels like a Robert Horry title, where they were both there for the ride.

I don't understand this mindset that a player can't be considered great if he doesn't win a championship. Charles Barkley never won a title, and I still consider him to be one of the greatest players that I have ever seen. Of the players on Golden State and Cleveland, I would take Barkley over everybody except LeBron.

Since when do we decide which championship was harder to win? Durant seems to have one goal in the NBA and that's to win championships. Hate to break it to you, but Durant's championship is just like anyone else's.

After the game last night one of the first things I saw on twitter was comparing Jordan's final record to LeBron's. I agree with you it's not the only way to evaluate legacy, but for the average fan that's what they base it off. KD got a max contract from the best team in the league, why the hell wouldn't he take that?

Well lets see if KD will be true to his word..he said he will take less than the max in order for the Warriors to keep the band together. Personally I dont think the league should allow it.

The imposition of the supermax will be for naught if the league would allow Curry and KD to coexists on less than their value despite both being eligible for it.

This league is a joke right now and frankly it should just be trimmed to 25 teams so everyone can form the best team possible with talent not being watered down.

Waitaminute.   Wasn't this 'okay' for Lebron & Bosh to take sub-max contracts in order to join with Wade in Miami?   Should the NBA have stepped in and disallowed that?

If you want players to be paid their true value then you'll have to remove max contracts and go to more of a model like ML Baseball uses.  In which case the only teams that win consistently will be the richest, major-market teams.

Or if you just can't stand the notion that players should have any control over their lives, we could just switch to an NFL-like model where the players are mostly just pawns to chewed up and spit out by the teams.

The obvious answer is to keep everything else the same and simply eliminate the max contract.  In a world where it's justifiable to pay a guy like Mike Conley more than LeBron James, Kevin Durant, or Kawhi Leonard, you can't expect the market to not yield strange outcomes.

LeBron doesn't even need his NBA salary, he could play for free and still be wealthy beyond imagination.  But offer him $60mil per year and he ain't turning that down from anyone.