Nba teams don’t have to pay transfer fees.

Soccer clubs start out in the red when the take on a new star because the have to pay millions up front.

This is reflected in the salaries they pay the players

Edit: plus soccer club rosters are much much bigger than nba rosters.

This also eats into the pie 

Messi was offered ONE POINT SIX BILLION US DOLLARS in Saudi Arabia before he decided to join MLS instead. Madness

Iirc MJ was paid the highest nba contract at a point and it basically started the you need to have a cap on how much you can pay your players rule. MJ was paid 30 million in 1996 which was the largest nba contract in history at the time. Today that’s worth 64 million dollars and in 1998 he was paid 33 million which today is worth 70 million dollars

Absolutely true. Salary cap depreciates wages for everyone. It’s why the MLBPA is fighting so hard to refuse the salary cap. Shohei makes 70 million if you include the deferrals and there are literally twice as many people per team.

Jordan made 122.6% of the salary cap in ⁹⁷⁄₉₈. Today that would be 202 million.
Garnetts rookie extension took up 67% of the Timberwolves salary cap the same year. That would be worth 110 million today.
In ¹⁹⁸⁴⁄₈₅ when the salary cap was established, Magic made 70% of the cap, Moses Malone made 61%. Those are the equivalent to 115 million and 100 million respectively.

Pre-max the league was littered with stars making that. Bird made 7 million in ⁹¹⁄₉₂ against a 12 million cap (58%), Magic made 14.6 million in ⁹⁴⁄₉₅ against a 15.9 million cap (91%). Ewing made 18.7 the next year against a 23 million cap. (81%)

The modern supermax is 35% of the salary cap at about 57 million.

I think you are wrong.

First golden rule in sports is to spend like 60% of revenue on salaries. In football teams sometimes spend like 80% but this pretty much meant that one bad season puts you in financial trouble.

CBA gives players like upper 50s of a income, so there isn’t much difference here. Without salary cap what would change is that big market teams could afford more/better players.

What caps salaries for top players are contract caps. Without those some players would probably command like near half of the cap (rough guess) and current upper middle class (players who can command max, but are not that good) and middle class (those sizeable contracts for good starters) being wiped out financially.

I have also been thinking about this.
The salary cap and contracts are adjusted to the NBAs revenue I believe. But Yes maybe some of the best would be paid like this.
Also in Soccer, they have about double the roster spots which chips away.
And I think another reason is, because you already need to buy a Player (e.g. Haaland at the Moment for 200 Million) and then on top of that you need to Pay their salary.

the NBA has guys already making salaries in that same range like Austin Reaves and the dude is not even an All Star. Soccer is by far the biggest global sport and I expected the top soccer salaries to be much closer to Ronaldos.

The United States is an outlier economically. The stuff that Americans like ends up having much more money pumped into it. Americans for whatever reason aren’t as into soccer.

Why not 1 trillion a year if there’s no salary cap

There’s no real nice way to say it but a lot of poor countries love soccer. American Leagues are naturally going to be able to extract more money when the fans have more in general

Capitalism for the billionaire owners…the horror! Don’t you know that’s only for workers and these poor owners need their investments protected. If a NBA team failed then taxpayers would need to pick up the cost, like the bank bailouts, so they are just doing us a favor can’t you see that! A free market is just craziness /s

the transfer fee factor is massive. an NBA team gets a rookie on a controlled contract for 4 years, a soccer club pays €60-100m upfront before even talking wages. that gap alone explains most of the difference

Before the max contract, Jordan made \(33 million in 97-98. The next player to make \)30 million a season was Kobe in 2013-2014. Yeah, you’re right.

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the other thing people don’t realize is soccer clubs have no salary cap but ffp keeps the spending somewhat grounded. the top PL guys like Haaland and Salah are on ~400k/week which is like 20m a year from salary, then endorsements on top. nba with no cap would be wild though, Ballmer would probably drop 200m on Steph just cause he can lol

The NBA’s CBA is a strange mix of player solidarity and player empowerment, that ends up leaving some top-end talent short-changed. I would say the recent Jaylen Brown case is illustrative of where it can go wrong for the player and the team, but “right” for the league. I also think it is demonstrative of the league’s need to expand to make space for slightly more even distribution of top-end talent.

Jaylen Brown was actually a player rep for the CBA, and I think the value of “when you reach certain achievements, you can be worth a super-max to your team” makes sense from the perspective of it being a rule where teams CAN pay a premium to their top talent. But because of when JB’s supermax contract opportunity came up (and now potential further extension) within the cycle relative to other stars, the expectation has been that he had to be given that super-max amount. The reasons why he should (potentially) are not because he is one of the absolute most valuable players in the league, but because with the cap, the top 2-3% of the league is effectively forced to be on the same level. This is why LeBron, Steph, Wemby, Jokic, Shai, Giannis and maybe a few others will NEVER get their full commercial value on a contract - but through the CBA, the top-tier “bigger than the game” superstars are sacrificing a bit out of solidarity with their teammates, so that the 1B stars and mid-tier players aren’t just fighting over scraps. JB was both eligible for top-tier payment, and the Celtics wanted to respect/honor that, and the nature of the CBA enough to give that to him, because if they hadn’t, it would have been seen as “disrespectful” and he would have likely demanded a trade eventually. But when he hasn’t continued to grow, and become more of a team player that can be a driver of efficiency within a system/team with lots of talent, they can’t afford to extend him AGAIN at that top tier. Where the C’s have been stung is that they probably “did the right thing” and gave JB some options of where he might be willing to go, and that left them with really no choice but a terrible trade to a nearby rival in the 76ers. Terrible outcome for the C’s, sub-optimal outcome for JB (although he was almost certainly given some choice - although there were probably not many teams that would take him!), but presumably this will bring some parity to the league.

Where I hope Brad Stevens is playing 4D chess, is that I actually think this move actively hurts the 76ers in the medium term, both cap-wise and team development wise. Embiid and Maxey are extension eligible next year for supermaxes, and they already have JB on a supermax. The maths just won’t math. On top of that you have VJ Edgecombe who has been a real bright spark alongside Maxey. His development is going to be completely stunted between the usage of Embiid and Jaylen Brown. I predict trying to work around Embiid’s injuries and adjust to JB’s playstyle is going to alienate Maxey and stunt Edgecombe and when they aren’t offered appealing extensions, they will leave in a couple years. Remember that neither of them have “got their bag yet” and Philly won’t be able to give it to them, without selling Embiid and JB for pennies on the dollar. So 2 years from now, Edgecombe and Maxey are alienated and either gone or on the way out, and you have two toxic unmovable contracts - Embiid is so injury prone, yet so dominant when he is able to play, that you can’t afford to move on from him. JB will be impossible to build around, and assuming he hasn’t received his max extension, will also be negatively motivated. So you could have within 4 years, nothing of this 76ers team left, and unless they are lucky, probably not even many draft assets to show for it.

Good. Fuck them owners

Soccer fever? God forbid someone introduces you to Football Manager

Agree. When everyone is a max player, truly max players are woefully underpaid.

How much equity did Steph create for the Warriors? Did the team value go up a billion dollars? Or 3 billion?

Clubs in England at least are much more limited in money. There’s no commercial breaks in soccer and they have limits to how much advertising can be done in the stadium. Also I believe they cant do naming deals either which is why those places are still called old trafford and such.

The thing people forget is the NBA has a max contract structure that actually caps what guys can make. In soccer there’s no such thing - if you’re a top 5 player globally the market decides your value. Put Bron in a global open market with no max and he’d be getting Saudi money too. Hell the Lakers alone generate more revenue than most European clubs, imagine what he’d be worth if there was no ceiling.

Yes and they would’ve suck

1 billion 10 year contract deal?

The funny part is LeBron was arguably underpaid for most of his prime because the max contract existed. His actual market value was probably impossible under the CBA.

Curry could ask for a $Billion+ and he would technically still be underpaid.

Bron actually doesn’t get that opportunity after jumping to so many teams, no offense it’s just facts.

And be underpaid

The league would go bankrupt with idiot owners giving Bradley Beal types 150m+ contracts.

Yeah we know

It’s not even really about their salaries, as much as it is selling out every home games and jerseys

The top echelon of Football players get paid more than NBA players.

Cristiano ronaldo is being paid on the 100s-200s million in Euros not USD so thats a higher conversion. But thats him.

Anyway Lionel Messi the GOAT in football has similar pay to lebron yearly

I’m pretty sure Cleveland re-invented it’s downtown around nationally televised downtown games.

The benefit to a city that LeBron brought in his prime was insane. 

The Warriors owners could have paid Steph 150m a year and still come out on top after everything set and done.

Roughly speaking a footballer players cost to the club in amortization the same as their gross salary. A player earning 20M costs 20M a year in 5 year amortizations. NBA doesn’t have have that. Also nba has a much shorter roster and it’s much cheaper to fill in the bench at little cost since RS doesn’t matter almost all down line. Football teams cannot afford to have mediocre players on the bench 

Money in soccer is more spread out, if you are 2000 best player in basketball, you need to start regular career after college, while in soccer you are probably getting half million wages in Mexico or in China.

You have to get rid of the max and the salary cap and I think maybe only LeBron would have commanded that. Before the second apron the cap was decently soft and owners still weren’t going over it. Even with no cap it’s hard to see teams spending more than 55% or 60% of revenue on their roster. That’s like 15m-30m more than right now. As superstar driven as the NBA is we know how important depth is and I just don’t think you’re competing if your best player is making like 50% of your teams payroll. 

Not saying Lebron and Steph wouldn’t get paid a fuck ton more, but using Austin Reaves as a benchmark is not accurate. The reason Reaves can get paid that much is because there is a max contract in the NBA. If there was no max and Luka was getting paid \(100M, the Lakers would not pay Austin \)45M. There is only so much money to go around. You might think other teams might pay him that much, but probably not. Because their #1 player would also be eating the lion share of the money. I think the best example is to look at the MLB. Ohtani is “only” getting paid 70M/year.

It’s over a decade old at this point, but Planet Money did an interesting episode about this.

https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2013/01/04/168627825/episode-427-lebron-james-is-underpaid

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