So can anyone remind me what was the point of the lockout again?

[no pun intended]

Please inform me especially with all these insane contracts this year. Thanks.

[bluechox2]

just wait for next economic recession...some teams gonna go extinct...

[DCL]

the salaries would had been even higher if it wasn't for the 2011 lockout. under the old CBA, the cap was set at 57% of BRI. the newer CBA changed that to a 51%-sharing model. if the old cap rate had remained, we would had already seen next year's contract levels already since cap is set to increase again to 107m next year. the 2011 lockout also changed the luxury tax distribution because teams under the cap now only get 50% with the remaining distributed to revenue sharing. that changes a lot of incentives. but the tax rates were also changed as well. it used to be a flat dollar for dollar penalty system. now it's set up more like the federal tax code at different threshold in incremental levels. each team has to analyze its own book to see what their benefits or costs are, and every team should have a staff of financial analysts to crunch these. to us, it may seem like they're all overpaying for these contracts, but to them, they might actually be paying less than we think since they receive payments back. the whole CBA wasn't just about players vs. owners, but also owners vs. owners. it was basically about a bunch of rich ass mothafuggas arguing with each other to see who can get more slices of the pie for themselves.

[Thorpesaurous]

The overwhelming majority of the cap spike is from the renewed TV deals. I don't know the language of the deals, but I'd be more worried about the TV networks than the league or teams.

Live sports is among the last vestiges holding cable contracts in place. And because of that, TV deals with sports programming is living on the bubble. It's noticeable now in the NBA, but it goes back a while with baseball. The Yankees for example were out front with their own network, in addition to being tied to a huge market. But every team now has sold their broadcast rights to some local entity, usually a Fox Sports affiliate. It became really clear when smaller market teams, like the Reds, started sewing up their young players to the type of contracts they never had before, like Joey Votto.

As everything is becoming more streaming friendly, signing a long term broadcast deal like the networks have the NBA, seems pretty risky. If a real streaming alternative comes out, which I'm sure the league is contractually obliged to fight, so probably not something official (unless it's a paid subscription that the league has to kick back to the networks with), the networks are open to huge losses.

[Spurs5Rings2014]

ITT: You want people who are richer to become richer at a higher rate and people who are less rich to become richer at a lower rate.

:sleeping