Billy Hunter talks about the NBA salary cap – NBA Lockout News
Billy Hunter has revealed in a recent interview that eliminating the NBA salary cap was discussed during labour negotiations with the owners, and he suggested some of them seemed interested in the idea.
The National Basketball Players Association’s Executive Director has labelled the salary cap structure as a “blood issue” for the NBA players. While the owners have demanded a hard salary cap to be enforced in any new Collective
Bargaining Agreement (CBA), the players hold a very different view.
Hunter and the players union want more exceptions in the NBA salary cap and believe any hard cap would be very detrimental to the NBA players. Hunter has time and again argued that a hard salary cap would drive down the salaries
for the majority of NBA players, something simply not acceptable to the player’s union.
Therefore it came as no surprise that when during a negotiation session when Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban proposed some exceptions in the salary cap, Hunter came back with the idea of eliminating it altogether. And Billy believes
some owners would have definitely considered it.
"We took that idea back into our room and we in turn responded with something similar," Hunter said. "I saw the reaction that (Cuban) had to it. I saw the reaction he had to it and two or three other owners in the room who were
really excited about it.” Hunter told ESPN.
Cuban and some other NBA owners, those owning teams in big markets, would have understandably been excited about the idea. The NBA salary cap structure is largely designed to favour smaller market teams as it cripples the bigger
teams’ ability to outmuscle them when it comes to player salaries.
However, the majority of the NBA owners like the cap simply because of the above reason. Moreover, NBA Commissioner David Stern is a big supporter of the system; he started it. Hunter alluded to that fact when explaining why the
idea didn’t fly.
"But then, keep in mind that when you start talking about no salary cap, the salary cap has existed in the NBA for at least the last 30 years and it was a creation of David Stern.” Billy said.
He himself though was very excited about the idea, as it would free up a lot more money to be spent on NBA players. Hunter also argued that it could also be beneficial in the long run, as it would cut down the complexity of the
current system and there could still be a threshold at the top.
“We wouldn't have to worry about a cap, so the exception, salaries, all that, there would be no limit with the exception of there obviously being a cap at the top, i.e., a quite heavy tax that teams would have to confront if they
went above a certain number.”
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