So, the Golden State Warriors have made bitches out of the Cavs, with game 4 still to go... The Cavs made bitches out of the Celtics. Before they made bitches out of the Cavs, the GSW made bitches out of the entire Western Conference. The Patriots made bitches out of pretty much the half of the NFL they played... Until they ran into the Falcons. Then, it was "A Tale of Two Bitches".... Pats the first half, Dirty Birds the second. The difference? The Patriots have a very, very tight hard salary cap. The GSW? Not so much. The NFL salary cap is set at $167 million. The NBA? $94 million. The big difference? In the NFL, you can't go over the cap and there are 53 active players. NBA? No hard cap, $94 million is for 15 guys. The pundits all say that the Warriors are the champs for the next 5 to 7 years. No one can compete. The Pats, hate them as you may, seem to consistently be at or near the top despite having crappy draft picks and a limited salary cap. The current set-up in the NBA is great... If you like the Warriors. At least, *this years Warriors* because they will cut the old dead wood this summer and load up with veteran players willing to play for the minimum to get a ring. Now, the GSW didn't set out to do this... They drafted Curry, Thompson and The Nutcracker. However, imagine you're a free agent. Do you want to sign with the Celtics, knowing you're at best 50-50 to get by the Cavs and run into the Warriors? Do you sign with San Antonio, knowing you're probably not getting by the Warriors for the next 5 years? FOCUS What's better? No cap and try to make an All-NBA team like the Warriors or hard cap and hope that your front office finds the right formula for a championship?
This is a problem that isn't unique to sport in the United States. Take, for example, the English Premier League. You have 20 teams, with the 3 bottom-placed teams relegated per season and 3 getting promoted from the Championship (the winner, the runner-up and the winner of the playoffs involving the teams that finished 3rd 4th, 5th and 6th in the regular season). However, not all teams are close on monetary terms as there is supposed to be no hard cap on wages, but 19 of the 20 teams did agree to not increase their wages by more than 7 million Pounds per annum - the team that didn't agree with the voluntary cap? Manchester City, owned by Sheikh Mansour - he's worth billions of Dollars and gives not one single fuck about wages. It should be noted here that all the Clubs get the same equal slide of the TV revenue pie and the teams that end up getting relegated get parachute payments over the next 3 seasons should they not get promoted back out of the Championship. However, many people laugh at Manchester City's defending, which they have spent probably close to a quarter of a billion Dollars on transfer fees, wages and agents' fees on players and yet every season they are unable to gel as a unit - they've probably spent close on another $20 million paying off still-under-contract managers. The only constant has been Vincent Kompany, who has been there nearly a decade in central defense. Then there's the case of Chelsea, owned by Russian billionaire Roman Abramovic. They've basically taken over the market for youth and teenage players - usually, including their first and reserve teams and their youth "program", Chelsea have around 70 players under contract, with many being loaned out to other Clubs. In the days before 2006 or so, Clubs would compete for signing the next young talent on a fairly equal basis - now, the only talented young players other Clubs see are those who aren't wanted by Chelsea, as contracts for young players is not, to my knowledge, governed by the voluntary agreement almost all of the Clubs signed. In short, the best approach for continued success is a combination of both - a qualified front office able to procure talented players with a good manager to lead them and an owner who can bankroll the team to some degree. NBA and NFL can learn something from the MLS in this regard - despite the sometimes questionable quality of the coaches, there is a hard cap for most of the teams' players except for the 3 DPs (designated players), where wages are only limited by the players' demands and what the owner can pay them.