OT - NBA Max Deals
I like Roy Hibbert. He's a very good player and very much a helpful piece to any center-less team wanting to contend for a title. I'd love him on my tema. That said, Roy Hibbert will now have a max contract, whether it be with the Blazers or the Pacers, if they choose to match.
My main question is: How must the league's actual superstars - the guys who change games, not just impact them (e.g. Durant, Bryant, James, etc.) - feel when they can't earn more money than a solid but hardly star-worthy guy like Hibbert? Is this just another example of owners sabotaging the intent of their own CBA by handing out big deals to guys they were not originally intended for? Or am I wrong thinking that Hibbert doesn't have the same impact on a team as a Kobe Bryant or Lebron James?
In an uncapped league (aka MLB), you're dead on. People loved to complain about Brandon Inge's contract, but it didn't prevent the team from spending a ton of money on Prince Fielder in this last off-season. When teams have to operate within the limits of a salary cap, though, bad contracts hinder the team's ability to compete over a period of time which, if you're a fan of a team, sucks to no end. The lack of roster flexibility that the Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva signings created delayed the Pistons becoming relevant again by at least 3 years, probably more.
But MLB teams, even the Yankees, still work within budgetary constraints, even if they're more flexible. They still have to deal with reprecussions for signing players to bad contracts.
But it still doesn't explain people's hostility to players (as opposed to the GMs that make the decisions).
For the Pistons, it wasn't just CV and BG but also Maxiell, Hamilton, Prince and other contracts that constrained the 'flexibility'. Which begs the question - how valuable is that flexibility anyway?