[Mr.Knick 32Participant]

LAS VEGAS — When Cleveland owner Dan Gilbert predicted that his Cavaliers would win a championship before The King and his Miami Heat Superfriends in his open letter to LeBron James, the assertion seemed about as foolish as the letter itself.

Yet Gilbert’s inexplicable confidence in making the statement — and lack of confidence in the Heat’s new star-studded core — may have stemmed from a scenario that has fast become a hot topic among the league’s owners: The notion that the Miami Three of James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh could be down to the Miami Two after just one season.

It is, in fact, a possibility.

Share8With the league’s collective bargaining agreement set to expire after next season, the owners are poised to go the way of the NHL and insist on a hard salary cap in the next deal that could be in the neighborhood of $45 million. If they are successful in that attempt — likely after a lockout like the one endured by the NHL in 2004-05 — the Heat and a number of other teams could be forced to release key players if their salaries surpassed the cap.

James, Wade and Bosh are reportedly scheduled to make a combined $43 million on their own next season with 10 percent annual raises thereafter, potentially meaning a nightmare scenario on South Beach. The Heat would hardly be alone in their despair, as the defending champion Lakers have approximately $80 million in committed salaries for the 2011-12 season and are slated to pay a combined $45 million for Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol alone.

The NBA currently has a soft salary cap, which includes numerous exceptions that allow teams to exceed the cap and a luxury tax threshold to deter teams from spending well beyond the cap. It is a system, however, that the owners are convinced no longer works in the current economic climate.

Commissioner David Stern claimed at the All-Star game in February that the owners are projected to lose approximately $400 million this season, with player’s association director Billy Hunter later being quoted calling those projections “baloney.” Considering the events that have transpired since, it’s safe to say Hunter isn’t done disputing Stern’s position.

The announcement of the 2010-11 salary cap certainly didn’t help Stern’s argument, as the final figure of $58.044 million (with a $70.307 million luxury tax threshold) was not only higher than the $57.7 million cap figure from last season but approximately $2 million higher than was recently projected and far higher than low-end prediction of $50.3 million given by the league last year. What’s more, the flurry of bloated free agent deals being given this month has players and agents alike rolling their eyes at the perceived disconnect between the words and deeds of the owners.

The NHL’s negotiating history is worth analyzing, as the owners are clearly using it as a reference point for their position. That revelation is the next step in the process, as sources confirmed to FanHouse that the owners were recently given the Players Association’s latest proposal and a miles-apart counter is to come.

In the case of the NHL, teams that lost players because of the new structure were given a week to buy out those contracts at a two-thirds rate. That money did not count against their cap, and those players could not re-sign with their current team. Additionally, all salaries on existing contracts were rolled back 24 percent.

All 30 teams will be represented at an owner’s meeting Monday in Las Vegas, where they’ll certainly discuss such matters. The meeting has been planned for months, although a counter proposal is not expected to be formalized during the session that is expected to last approximately three hours. It remains unclear which options the owners will consider that could help avoid the doomsday scenario and break-up of the Miami Three, whether it’s grandfathering in contracts that were signed before the new CBA or perhaps implementing the hard cap in phases over numerous years to allow teams to make the necessary adjustments.

If not, however, Gilbert’s seemingly-senseless prediction could wind up being right after all.

http://nba.fanhouse.com/2010/07/11/could-miamis-super-team-be-broken-up-after-one-year/

[OldSkoolBasketballParticipant]

It can happen. Will it happen? No

[wowthisisneatParticipant]

when the NHL came out of the lockout all players took a 24% paycut i would expect something like that and not teams having to release players

[WillisWaltParticipant]

Every professional sport would benefit if player salaries were reduced by some set percentage. It’s been too long that negotiations were all about how the millionaire players and billionaire owners would split up the poor man’s dollar. The fans of these sports have been taken advantage of and abused for too long. I’d love to see a large reduction in the NBA salary cap, and a structure in place that makes $17 million dollar per year salaries a thing of the past.

I was a St. Louis Cardinals fan when Curt Flood got this whole crazy thing started, but it is way out of control now.

Any opinions out there?

[stanford hoops]

how are the fans taken advantage of?..they know were the money is going and how much a ticket cost yet they still pay it

[BothTeamsPlayedHardParticipant]

This is why much people need to figure out that the next NBA collective bargaining agreement will be less radical than is being thrown out. Why would the owners of New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Dallas, and Boston want to ruin their good thing. Why would they go for a hard cap that would guarantee they would not be able to compete with teams with young, cheap foundations? The league doesn’t want to screw up the fact that their big market teams have an advantage. The system guarantees nothing to the big market teams, but it allows them to spend more if they have it. Why screw that up?
I think the cap will go down, the players’ share of revenue will go down, the amount of the players’ salary held in escrow will go up, annual raises will be lowered -especially for rookie scale players, and the MLE will become a percent of the cap as opposed to the average player thing they do now. They won’t scrap the system. The owners who benefit from it will never allow it.

[stanford hoops]

basically everything will happen the way the owners want things to happen. the owners can live with a lockout because the nba isnt that high or even on the list of there source of income. it is for the players though. a lockout is easy ont he stars but not so much on the lower end guys who during the lockout cant go play in europe

[ItsVictorOladipoParticipant]

I do think that the Miami triplets might break up after one year. Completely different reasoning however.

There is so much pressure on them to win a championship next year, a kind of pressure I’ve honestly never seen before. If they lose a few games here or there the media is going to be all over them. Invariably ppl will start to point fingers. This team is made up of so many disparate parts, so many guys who’ve never played with each other before a control freak head coach who has never had to deal with certain players and egos.

If Miami doesn’t win the finals this year (or even get to the finals), the Heat could implode.

If that were to happen I wouldn’t be shocked to see Lebron traded to the Knicks, Nets or Bulls next off season.

[Author]

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