Nba Salary Cap

The NBA Salary cap is an interesting topic. It is a little different than other sports' salary caps. A salary cap is a limit on the amount of money that a team can spend on player contracts. (Coon, 1) Although the NBA has a salary cap, teams can still go over the amount of the cap and are allowed. The NBA Salary cap is considered to be a soft cap because of the exceptions teams can use to pay more money for certain players and go over the salary cap. In other sports they may not have a certain limit on how much money a team can spend on a player or their team. Baseball for example, they are allowed to spend as much money as they want on a team. That is why the New York Yankees have a lot of big name players with high paying contracts. In most other sports there is a limit though on how much you can spend on a team. Teams gain revenue from tickets purchased, food and beverages sold at the game, parking, television, advertising, merchandising fees, and corporate sponsors. (Judson, 73) This revenue is what teams are able to pay for the players. So is it a good thing for the NBA to have a salary cap? Also does this really make the competition in the league really any better between the teams?

The NBA's first season was in 1946-47. Even in the first season when there wasn't even a lot of money to be given out to players in the league there was the start of the salary cap. The salary cap that year was $55,000 and Joe Fulks was the highest paid athlete in the NBA with a contract of $8,000. (Coon, 1) By the 1984-85 season the salary cap started to change into what is today's soft cap. That years salary cap was $3.6 million. This year the salary cap is $49.5 million. So it is safe to say that people are a lot more people got interested in the NBA between the 84-85 season and the 05-06 season. In twenty one years the salary cap went up $45.9 million. From the 46-47 season and the 84-85 season, in thirty eight years the salary cap only went up from $55,000 to $3.6 million. Starting after the 84-85 season is when the salary cap started to increase a lot from year to year. There is one exception from season to season where the salary cap actually went down from the last season. The 01-02 season cap was $42.5 million but for the 02-03 season went down to $40.271 million. (2004CNN/SportsIllustrated, 1) The reason for the loss of money for the in the salary cap is because of the lost interest of the games being televised. Player salaries are based on how many years they have been in the NBA. The league has set a maximum amount of money for players under a certain amount of years in the league and a minimum amount that a team can pay a player based on a scale. (Insidehoops, 1)For example, Lebron James is getting paid $19 million for a four year contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers. This is the Leagues max for a rookie. This may hurt teams because of the older players in the league that may not be as good as some of the younger players. The team has to pay him more just because of the number of years he has been in the league. There used to be a rule if a team signs another teams free agent the team that lost the free agent would get money or the would be able to get a draft pick. This is most famous because that is how the Los Angeles Lakers were able to get Magic Johnson. (Coon, 1) The average NBA salary cap for a player during the 03-04 season was $1.8 million. (Insidehoops, 1)So the players that do not even hardly ever play are getting somewhere near this amount. The league computes the average salary by taking the total salaries paid during the previous season, divide it by 13.2 times the number of teams excluding the expansion teams in their first two seasons and then add eight percent. (Insidehoops, 1)

The highest ever paid athlete in the NBA was Michael Jordan in the 97-98 season with the Chicago Bulls with a contract of $33 million. (Badenausen, 64) Most people think that he was worth all of that money too because Chicago won five back to back NBA championships with Jordan there. Although it is not always the case like in the 04-05 season when the Sacramento Kings won the NBA championship they were only the ninth highest paid team in the NBA with a salary of $62,000. Michael Jordan got paid more than half of the Sacramento Kings salary. He is just one player and they still had to pay for about 12 to 14 more players contracts also. Along with Michael Jordan the Bulls had Scottie Pippen who was one of the better players in the league too. This didn't work for the 04-05 season with the teams who had the high team salaries. Two of the top five highest paid teams that year even made the playoffs. Those teams were the Dallas Mavericks with a $90,900,000 salary and the Philadelphia 76ers with a salary of $70,700,000. Phoenix the third lowest team salary with $43,100,000 made the playoffs. (Insidehoops, 1) So not necessarily does the team with the highest paid teams win the Championship or even make it into the playoffs. However the Sacramento Kings did have the highest paid coach during that season. Rick Adelman was getting paid $6.9 million. So maybe it has to do with the coach that the team has. Four of the top five paid coaches that season had their team in the playoffs. Now when you are talking about the top paid players for the season of 2005-06 the top five players none of them are on the Sacramento Kings. Shaquille O'Neal was the highest paid at $20 million and he plays for Miami Heat. (Insidehoops, 1) The Heat made the playoffs the year before so maybe they feel that he is worth that money to pay. It seems though that the teams like the Kings who don't really have just one superstar on the team are doing the best overall in the wins.

The salary caps differ from sport to sport on how much you can spend on a team and how much the average salary is. Since the salaries that the teams have come from the average revenues from the league it depends on how much the league brings in. In 2003-04 season the NBA's estimated revenue was $3.1 billion the salary caps are more than what the NHL's salary cap is. In that same year the estimated total revenue for the NHL was $2.1 billion. The average salary for the NHL player and the NBA player is $1.8 million. (Insidehoops, 1) Although the average is the same there are more players in the NBA with much higher salaries than the top players in the NHL. The NBA's top five paid athletes are the highest paid athletes compared to any other professional sport. Even though the NBA has the second lowest team salary cap for the top five paid teams in the 01-02 seasons compared to NFL, MLB, and the NHL's top five paid teams. The estimated value of the New York Yankees is about $1,849 million. The Washington Redskins are estimated at being worth $952 million. Then the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers are worth an