Mark Cuban did not propose the elimination of salary cap: NBA Lockout News
The NBA have refuted claims that Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban proposed eliminating the salary cap altogether in the labour negotiations with the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA).
NBPA Executive Director Billy Hunter had suggested something on those lines during a recent interview.
The NBA was one of the first sports leagues in the world to introduce a salary cap system and teams are discouraged from spending more than a set amount on player salaries. The league has had the system in place for over 30 years
and uses measures such as the luxury tax to stem the tide of rising player salaries, although there are some loopholes like the mid-level exception.
The salary cap has become a hot topic for discussion during the current NBA lockout as both sides are vying to make changes for their own advantage. However NBPA’s Billy Hunter dropped a bomb shell with his revelations earlier,
especially considering that the NBA owners have been pushing for a hard cap for years.
NBA senior vice president Mike Bass categorically denied on Tuesday that Mark Cuban, or any NBA owner, had proposed abolishing the salary cap system. He said the Mavericks owner proposed some changes to the system and it was the
players union that mentioned elimination.
"On behalf of the league, Mark Cuban proposed adding a new salary cap exception, not eliminating the salary cap," Bass said. "It was the union that, in response, proposed eliminating the salary cap, a proposal that was even worse
for the NBA than the union's prior proposals."
The NBA owners subsequently rejected the proposal, something even Billy Hunter admitted to when he made the disclosures earlier.
"But what happened was the owners then decided, at least the leaders of their delegation decided, they had to take it back in a different direction. They said, 'We don't want to address that. We don't want to deal with that idea.
We want to go back and proceed along the track that we've been proceeding along for the last year or more.'" Billy told ESPN.
His remarks suggest that he thought at least some of the owners were interested in the system. It wouldn’t be too surprising if someone like Mark Cuban, who is known to spend lavishly on his team, or the owners of some big market
teams like the Los Angeles Lakers, would be open to the idea.
Although it could put some of the smaller market sides in the league at a disadvantage, it would also be a blessing for the richer teams in the league who would then be able to flex their financial muscle to good effect.
Tags: