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The Jazz have been over the cap since the 04/05 season (I think...certainly since the 05/06 season). That's the case with all but a few NBA teams every season. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess you don't understand how the NBA's soft cap works.

Are you sure the jazz have been over the luxury tax (not cap)for five six years? I am pretty sure they did not go over it but 2 years at the most and they where trying to get under it both times (mostly because of ak). Jazz did not want to pay close to 10 million that first year for mathews which the soft cap would have cause by going over it. I know what a soft cap is and it is pretty much paying dollar for dollar for what you go over the Lt. That does not help the jazz. They are not going to go over the cap every year and for what they have been able to do I give them a lot of credit for. If you feel the system is right by all means go for it. The one good thing about the cap right now is that if you don't go over it teams get some money back. That is why a lot of teams stay under it but still doesn't make the jazz chances any better. Maybe you are talking about a soft cap that is not in place yet. Not sure.
 
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Are you sure the jazz have been over the luxury tax (not cap)for five six years? I am pretty sure they did not go over it but 2 years at the most and they where trying to get under it both times (mostly because of ak). Jazz did not want to pay close to 10 million that first year for mathews which the soft cap would have cause by going over it. I know what a soft cap is and it is pretty much paying dollar for dollar for what you go over the Lt. That does not help the jazz. They are not going to go over the cap every year and for what they have been able to do I give them a lot of credit for. If you feel the system is right by all means go for it. The one good thing about the cap right now is that if you don't go over it teams get some money back. That is why a lot of teams stay under it but still doesn't make the jazz chances any better.
You said "cap" not "LT" or "luxury tax". The Jazz have not been hurt by the soft cap. They've been one of the biggest spenders in recent years, and the soft cap has allowed them to stay competitive (and re-sign Deron, S&T Boozer, etc.). Only a few teams per year go over the LT. Keeping a similar soft cap structure, while making the LT line a hard cap, would disproportionately help small market teams. That would be a nice compromise IMO.

Also, a hard cap would not help teams who make poor contract decisions, like the Jazz have with AK and Memo. Had their been a hard cap the last few years, the Jazz would most likely have been a worse team.

Why are you still calling the LT line the cap? The salary cap is the lower line, the Luxury tax is the higher line.

And again, the Jazz had a higher payroll than the Blazers AND were over the LT last season, so under a hard cap regime, they wouldn't have been able to keep Wes. Your example is puzzling.
 
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Hell, under a hard cap, the Jazz wouldn't have been able to S&T Boozer, trade for Big Al, or most likely re-sign Deron either. How does that help the Jazz?
 
You said "cap" not "LT" or "luxury tax". The Jazz have not been hurt by the soft cap. They've been one of the biggest spenders in recent years, and the soft cap has allowed them to stay competitive (and re-sign Deron, S&T Boozer, etc.). Only a few teams per year go over the LT. Keeping a similar soft cap structure, while making the LT line a hard cap, would disproportionately help small market teams. That would be a nice compromise IMO.

Also, a hard cap would not help teams who make poor contract decisions, like the Jazz have with AK and Memo. Had their been a hard cap the last few years, the Jazz would most likely have been a worse team.

Why are you still calling the LT line the cap? The salary cap is the lower line, the Luxury tax is the higher line.

And again, the Jazz had a higher payroll than the Blazers AND were over the LT last season, so under a hard cap regime, they wouldn't have been able to keep Wes. Your example is puzzling.

A few might be slight exaggeration. Seven teams had to pay a LT penalty for this past year. 11 teams did the year before.
 
A few might be slight exaggeration. Seven teams had to pay a LT penalty for this past year. 11 teams did the year before.
Yep, good call. 2010 was a bit of an outlier on account of the LT and salary cap going down. You can generally count on about 1/4 of NBA teams paying the tax, which is more than I figured. Sorry for the misinformation...I should have looked at the numbers before using the words "a few".

With that said, I still think if you were to just change the LT line to a hard cap, while still maintaining exceptions and the soft salary cap below the LT, and perhaps put a more robust revenue sharing system in place, you'd level the playing field significantly without completely annihilating roster continuity. I think a strict hard cap, like in the NHL and NFL, would be a mistake.
 
You said "cap" not "LT" or "luxury tax". The Jazz have not been hurt by the soft cap. They've been one of the biggest spenders in recent years, and the soft cap has allowed them to stay competitive (and re-sign Deron, S&T Boozer, etc.). Only a few teams per year go over the LT. Keeping a similar soft cap structure, while making the LT line a hard cap, would disproportionately help small market teams. That would be a nice compromise IMO.

Also, a hard cap would not help teams who make poor contract decisions, like the Jazz have with AK and Memo. Had their been a hard cap the last few years, the Jazz would most likely have been a worse team.

Why are you still calling the LT line the cap? The salary cap is the lower line, the Luxury tax is the higher line.

And again, the Jazz had a higher payroll than the Blazers AND were over the LT last season, so under a hard cap regime, they wouldn't have been able to keep Wes. Your example is puzzling.



I guess what i am trying to say is that teams that are winning are going over that Lt where the jazz can not keep doing that. The soft cap might not hurt the jazz as much but I think that is something that still hurts to pay for. I am just saying with wes was that the blazers would have never offered him that much money to start with if there was a hard cap. Making him cheaper to keep on the jazz end. And Ak has already hurt this team from doing anything for years so how would that make a difference now? They need to fix that as well if they do come up with a hard cap. Boozer also was another one that hurt this team. So no matter how you put it with any kind of cap those kind of things are going to hurt any team. That is not going to change unless they fix it to non guaranteed contracts. As far as the jazz being a worse team with a hard cap because of memo and ak i am sure there would have been something to free up those cap spaces. Jazz are set up now for a hard cap the way they did things. My personal feel is that there should be a hard cap and there should be a limited on what a max contract is. One player on the team can make 15 while no one else can go over 10 million. I just don't want to see the nba turn into something worse then it has gotten into. If I have to watch the heat and lakers take it the next ten years I am just going to throw up in my mouth. I don't like how the players have dictated what they are going to do.
 
I guess what i am trying to say is that teams that are winning are going over that Lt where the jazz can not keep doing that. The soft cap might not hurt the jazz as much but I think that is something that still hurts to pay for. I am just saying with wes was that the blazers would have never offered him that much money to start with if there was a hard cap. Making him cheaper to keep on the jazz end. And Ak has already hurt this team from doing anything for years so how would that make a difference now? They need to fix that as well if they do come up with a hard cap. Boozer also was another one that hurt this team. So no matter how you put it with any kind of cap those kind of things are going to hurt any team. That is not going to change unless they fix it to non guaranteed contracts. As far as the jazz being a worse team with a hard cap because of memo and ak i am sure there would have been something to free up those cap spaces. Jazz are set up now for a hard cap the way they did things. My personal feel is that there should be a hard cap and there should be a limited on what a max contract is. One player on the team can make 15 while no one else can go over 10 million. I just don't want to see the nba turn into something worse then it has gotten into. If I have to watch the heat and lakers take it the next ten years I am just going to throw up in my mouth. I don't like how the players have dictated what they are going to do.
So a hard cap would work if you limited contract length, nerfed contract size AND got rid of guaranteed contracts? Good luck with that.
 
Wouldn't it be easier and more feasible to just keep the system as is, but change the LT line to a hard cap? That way, teams could still go above the lower line to sign their own players, have exceptions to sign players in between, and have more flexibility to do Sign-and-Trades, etc.
 
...anything short of a season long lockout...will be extremely disappointing to me....even if they end up cutting the salaries in half!
Why do you spend your free time on an NBA oriented message board? You can't find a crocheting forum or some other group that would match your interests?
 
With that said, I still think if you were to just change the LT line to a hard cap, while still maintaining exceptions and the soft salary cap below the LT, and perhaps put a more robust revenue sharing system in place, you'd level the playing field significantly without completely annihilating roster continuity. I think a strict hard cap, like in the NHL and NFL, would be a mistake.
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I guess what i am trying to say is that teams that are winning are going over that Lt where the jazz can not keep doing that. The soft cap might not hurt the jazz as much but I think that is something that still hurts to pay for. I am just saying with wes was that the blazers would have never offered him that much money to start with if there was a hard cap.

I'm not sure you know what a hard cap is, but if the Blazers couldn't have offered Wes that contract, the Jazz SURE AS HELL couldn't have matched it. They couldn't have done anything.
 
I'm not sure you know what a hard cap is, but if the Blazers couldn't have offered Wes that contract, the Jazz SURE AS HELL couldn't have matched it. They couldn't have done anything.

How so? You don't even know how it would have been set up on a hard cap to do anything. Every player would have to take a 20% or more taken out of their pay and who knows how how things would be set up to free some players.
 
Wouldn't it be easier and more feasible to just keep the system as is, but change the LT line to a hard cap? That way, teams could still go above the lower line to sign their own players, have exceptions to sign players in between, and have more flexibility to do Sign-and-Trades, etc.

That is a hard cap and that might be what owners end up with when it is all said and done. The higher the cap the worse it is on teams that can not spend.
 
How so? You don't even know how it would have been set up on a hard cap to do anything. Every player would have to take a 20% or more taken out of their pay and who knows how how things would be set up to free some players.

It's really, REALLY easy how I know. A HARD cap is a cap that a team cannot go over. Period. Regardless of where the cap is, the Jazz had more salary committed than the Blazers did last offseason. Therefore, the Blazers had more money to offer Wes than the Jazz could've afforded.

A hard cap makes it harder for small-market teams to stay good. People are worried about getting Lebron-ed in the last CBA? It would be monumentally worse if the home-team can't offer their own player more money than some big market team, and in the situation with the Heat, not only did Lebron and Bosh take less money to go there, their home teams wouldn't have even BEEN ABLE to offer as much money as the Heat in a hard-cap system.
 
How so? You don't even know how it would have been set up on a hard cap to do anything. Every player would have to take a 20% or more taken out of their pay and who knows how how things would be set up to free some players.
There is talk about the existing contracts being grandfathered in or somehow not fully counting against the hard cap; if they were, then the hard cap (i.e. Miami) would make it impossible for some teams to even fill out their roster. But all new contracts would be.

One way to do it is to count all existing contracts as a maximum of 25% of the hard cap; contracts worth less than 25% of the hard cap would be counted at face value. But neither Derek Fisher nor the owners have hired me for my opinion; if they had, then the lockout would be over already, and the season would be in process toward starting ;).
 
Good points, IGS. Any conversion probably favors Miami and teams who are tight against the cap. Right now, Miami can only offer league minimum contracts to players or use their exceptions since the "Big 3" take up all their cap space. I'd hate to see a new CBA result in them being able to go out and get another all-star caliber player. Utah has some major salary coming off soon (AK now, then Memo, with Harris in 2 years). I just hope the new CBA makes it easier to retain your own FA's. And I think that will be teh case. Most owners don't want a repeat of what happened with Lebron & Anthony, nor the scenarioo that was playing out with Deron and CP3.
 
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