AROUND the NBA: Pat Bev Suspended 4 Games Next Season| PHX Fires Vogel

[F Gump]

If the NBA ever truly wants parity they MUST implement a hard cap. Other teams just can't compete with ones who can spend above the cap like that.

The players won't accept a hard cap ...

But it can be argued that the luxury tax is going to discourage teams from being willing to spend, at a certain point. I can't imagine that the Warriors revenues are big enough to support spending about $750M in a year just on player salaries (contracts plus tax), which is what we are talking about here.

The idea of giving Draymond away next summer sounds good financially (it would cut the $500M tax bill down to only $250M), but it's hard to move giant contracts for no salary in return, because the teams with enough cap room are so limited. More likely, maybe they shop him at the deadline for expiring contracts?

But at some point, they just don't sign someone in the first place -- for example, if they just let Wiggins walk, and keep everyone else including DG, the savings to them (in salary and tax together) is over $400M! I would think that number is big enough to get someone's attention and make them inclined to say "Stop."

We will probably see lots of articles about this looming GS issue in the next 6 months, as the Warriors moan and groan about having to make choices. (Although perhaps just whispers to get the articles written, without speaking directly, since they got slapped down and fined for whining about it already.) They don't like it, but the tax is going to be doing what it was intended to do - spread the talent and force teams with varying revenues to spend closer to evenly.