The modern NBA superstar is now the most powerful genre of athlete in American professional team sports history. Those elite players have it all: the riches, the platform, the influence, the savvy about the league’s business and the audacity to use everything for their own good, no matter the consequences.
The latter two things – the know-how and the nerve – frighten and intrigue at once. It’s an uneasy feeling because it’s unfamiliar. You’re used to athletes competing, getting their money, enjoying their fame, trying to win their championships and leaving everything else to function mostly without their input. Historically, the lanes have been defined, and the roles have been honored. As long as the collective bargaining agreement guaranteed them fair compensation, the players played, the owners owned and the general managers managed.
But now, 29 years since Tom Chambers pioneered NBA unrestricted free agency, the NBA superstar has figured out how to run the show. The league sways on the whims of its greatest players, who currently believe in partnership over parity.
It’s easy to declare the NBA has a parity problem. The symptom causes everyone to point and stare. But it’s important to understand the condition that created it first. Marquee players understand their power now. Since the summer of 2010, when the greatest free agent class in league history featured with LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh joining forces in Miami, the biggest stars have learned to leverage their talent and popularity to shift control of how organizations are built in their favor. Yes, organizations still win championships, but not without superstars serving as unofficial members of the front office.
You want parity? Well, the first question has to be: What do the stars want? Right now, stars want to combine their powers. It has been 25 years since the Dream Team graced the Olympics, and the fact that the NBA’s best regularly play together on Team USA has thawed the competitive ice that once made the league so interesting. It’s a different era. This generation has its own mentality. Stars understand each other better because they’re not always adversaries. But the pressure to win multiple championships – if you really want to be considered an all-time great – remains. So they’ve figured out a team-building cheat code, and they’re doing business their way.
You want parity? Well, here’s the second question: How do you structure the league so that stars have incentive not to make like Kevin Durant and create a super team? Remember, this is a collectively bargained sport that is in good overall condition and making serious money currently. Dramatic change doesn’t happen when everyone’s pockets are bulging. So if you want to tweak the system, it’s not going to happen until 2024, when the new CBA is set to expire.
But it’s never a bad time to float ideas for long-term consideration. For all the solutions out there, including instituting a hard salary cap, the most realistic remedy for parity is actually a continuation of what the league is already doing.
In the new CBA, under which the league will operate starting this season, the NBA has continued its efforts to help teams retain their stars by allowing them to pay more. The league had already made max contracts worth more for players who decided to stay. Now it is instituting a super-max contract, called the designated player veteran extension, for essentially the game’s top 15 players. If players meet certain elite criteria, they’re eligible to sign extensions that can pay them more than $40 million per season, in many cases, to remain with their teams.
This summer is considered a test of how effective that will be. Russell Westbrook, the new league MVP, can sign a five-year deal worth about $215 million to stay with the Oklahoma City Thunder. Westbrook, whose current contract expires after next season, would forfeit a chance to earn $70 million-$80 million if he left for elsewhere as a free agent.
The money is a strong reason for Westbrook to remain with a small-market team that has been consistently good. But the problem is that, when you’re a marketable and transcendent star, you can sacrifice a super max for a mortal max and at least come close to making it up through endorsements by playing in a bigger market or for a team with a better chance to win a championship. I
In the future, the NBA will have to provide a greater incentive. This max-salary system is going to die, eventually, because too many players are getting max contracts. Anyone who is a top 15 free agent in a given year will demand a max contract. And if you’re currently an NBA have-not – or even a pretty good team that aspires to be great – you can’t build one of the league’s most talented teams if the new standard is to give the max to your top three players, regardless of whether they’re truly elite.
By the end of the summer, John Wall might be the third-highest paid player on the Washington Wizards. It makes no sense. Neither does the fact that James hadn’t been the league’s highest-paid player until recently.
The structure has to change. Pat Riley, the former great coach and Miami Heat president, is among those who have suggested a franchise tag in which teams have a salary cap exception to sign its best player to whatever their owners want to pay. There would have to be some restrictions to keep owners from being foolishly aggressive. But if the NBA could do that and tighten its salary cap rules while being fair to the players association, there would be greater incentive for stars to stay.
But does the NBA really want to force parity? Free agency is as exciting as the Finals right now. For the next two weeks, the league will dominate the attention. Actually, it already has begun to do so, with Chris Paul forcing a trade to Houston and Phil Jackson leaving the New York Knicks within the past week. If the Utah Jazz could offer Gordon Hayward $45 million a year to stay, is that really in Utah’s best interest? The leagues? Or is the possible formation of a Boston Celtics super team more compelling?
One thing is certain: Hayward is free to do what he wants, which is kind of the point of free agency. And he’ll make a power move because he’s an NBA star. And the league will sway a little on his decision.