I couldn’t agree more, BBA. I would think that the NBA would want teams to keep their players.

There are three other angles:
the diamond in the rough memes of Lin and Novak were great stories and inspiration, as well as great media for the league. You lose that when you prevent teams from keeping those players.

Also, teams would have much less incentive to look for these “diamonds in the rough” off waivers unless they’re significantly below the cap. Think about it: either the player claimed from waivers doesn’t pan out or he does “too” good and the team can’t re-sign him. Players claimed off waivers would thus only be used for emergency/injury situations.

Third, we should want well-run teams to be rewarded for making these types of calls. On Truehoop they’ve complained about the draft rewarding poorly-run teams. Even if we don’t change the draft, we should at least keep something that rewards well-run teams.

The league shouldn’t want to create a situation in which Linsanity/Novakaine is either eliminated or ruined.

If I were advising Smith, I cannot see a good raise to exercise the option. If he does, he takes less than he could get from the Knicks (let alone on the market) and leaves himself at risk after this season. If he wants to stay with the Knicks, it makes more sense to negotiate a Non-Bird 120% contract and get a player option for next season. If the Knicks are not willing to do that, there will be a lot of teams who will offer at least the mini-MLE and some who will offer the MLE.

As everyone has noted, this basically means that the Knicks can go out and sign one pretty good player for $3 million. They can take a shot at Nash for $5 million (after dumping Toney) but that seems unlikely. There are tons of guys out there that can be had for $3 million. So many that I don’t know if it it even makes sense to put a list together yet. I do think that this means Fields is likely to return, since so long as the Knicks don’t use the MLE or the BAE then they can just use the mini-MLE and bring Lin, Fields and Novak back.

Brian Cronin:
I understand the complaint. This move gives teams another avenue to go over the luxury tax. The NBA wants to make it difficult to go over the luxury tax.

I think Stern & The League tried to argue both sides of this issue during the lockout and in Stern’s recent interview. Stern said a “main issue” during the lockout was to make it harder for players (read: Lebron) to leave teams (read: Cleveland/Gilbert) so now a team can make an offer with much larger raises (7.5% vs. 4% or something like that) to a player on their respective team. So Lin and Novak were trying to stay with their team, and now Stern doesn’t want that team to go over the cap to sign players even though much of the lockout was to prevent player freedom/movement. Also, the arbiter (NOT “arbitrator”!) correctly realized that a waived player was denied a right (their “Bird Rights”) when they did nothing (they got waived). As a hardcore union guy, I am super pleased! Now we need Brian to post a REALISTIC vision of what this means. As near as I can tel this is it: Lin signs for about $5 mil per year, maybe 3 years. Novak 2 or 3 years at $3 mil JR has 2 avenues to stay, if he leaves, he leaves. Seems lime that leaves the Knicks with a $3 mil slot for somebody reasonably good. Nash, rumors say, has already been offered $20 mil for 2 years by Pho. Can’t imagine him coming. So what ONE other free agent is reasonable? All in all — awesome stuff — I think Knicks will be #2 seed next year in east (with a lot of luck).

Z:
What, exactly, is the NBA’s issue here. Why do they care about this? Is it a “containment” strategy so that other aspects of the CBA aren’t challenged? It seems like a matter that Dtern has championed during his tenure: allowing teams to retain their own talent. Is there a “bigger picture” at play here?

From what Ive read its your first point, not wanting this to open up a can of worms and have other aspects of the CBA challenged.

The NBPA used your point about how the new soft cap system is supposed to make it easier to hold on to your own players so as you said it makes no sense for the NBA to want to challenge this.