• It's not all about this free-agent class. All we've been hearing about is the importance of the coming summer, when LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and Joe Johnson will be on the market.
But a more ominous date is 2011, as owners and players look ahead to a new collective bargaining agreement that will take effect in 2011-12. Four team executives have told me they're anticipating a hard cap on payrolls, which will clamp down on player salaries and prevent big franchises like the Lakers, Knicks and Celtics from outspending teams from smaller markets.
A hard cap would transform the way teams are assembled. Look at the Lakers, whose payroll of $91.4 million has vaulted them a league-leading $33.7 million above the cap. Try this perspective: If the soft-cap system of today was instantly replaced by a hard cap, the Lakers would no longer be able to afford the salaries of Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum, who are their second- and third-most-expensive players with current salaries of $16.5 million and $12.5 million, respectively. And even their disposal wouldn't be enough: The Lakers would need to slash another $4.8 million to climb under the hard cap. (Goodbye, Luke Walton.)
If, in fact, a hard cap is installed after next season, then it will likely be preceded by a transitional system over a short number of years that will enable contenders like the Lakers to keep the likes of Gasol and Bynum without destroying their roster. After all, it would be self-defeating for the NBA to instantly deconstruct the most popular -- and expensive -- payrolls. Maybe some kind of amnesty will enable a few salaries to be grandfathered in until those preexisting contracts expire.
No one knows for sure what kind of system will result from extended negotiations and a potential lockout of the players in July 2011. Some believe (as you'll see below) that the players will avoid a hard cap, or that other more creative solutions will be applied. But let me repeat this much: I asked executives from four teams what they think they'll be dealing with after next season, and all four predicted a hard cap.
"I really think worst case it will be a hard cap that gets phased in over three years," a GM said.
By "worst case," he's implying that the players shouldn't hope for anything better than a three-year transition. Another senior executive predicts an even more draconian transformation, especially if a failure of negotiations results in a lockout. "Our players don't save money," he said, and so he predicts that a few months without income will force the players to cave in and accept the owners' demands, including an instantaneous reduction in salaries similar to the harsh transformation of the NHL, which was able to get its players to concede to a 24 percent pay cut following the season-long lockout of 2004-05.
"If there's going to be a lockout," he said, "then there's a 99 percent chance there is going to be a hard cap."
