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Greetings! It has been awhile, but as in the past, please view this site as the equivalent of a fire alarm: In Emergency, Break Glass!
The fire of NBA superstar free agency hasn’t hit Milwaukee yet and may bypass our town – but we can see the smoke from other NBA outposts and it is time to discuss the problem. Once again we’ve seen the issue of a superstar’s soon to be free agency cause a league wide disruption leading to angst among multiple franchises. Rather than focusing on what is a very healthy and exciting on-court product, the league is instead focusing on the multiple angles by which Anthony Davis could be on the move due to his unwillingness to sign a “Super-Max” contract extension with New Orleans this summer.
As Bobby Marks noted on a recent Woj podcast, the two New York and two LA based teams will possibly have a total of SEVEN max salary slots for the summer of 2019 (The Nets with two, the Knicks with two, Clippers with two and the Lakers with one). As we’ve seen this past week, that situation forces the front offices of all 30 teams to figure out how it will impact their ability to navigate not just this summer but subsequent years down the road.
We’ll take a deep dive into the problem, the potential solution of a franchise player tag (different from the NFL version), and then a discussion of why the tag is something that could realistically be implemented if the owners so desired. Buckle up and let’s go!
The Problem:
The NBA has always been a league where a star player can have an outsized impact on the success of your franchise. Should your team acquire a star like Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan or now LeBron James, you then have a pathway to an NBA title that 80%-90% of the other franchises do not possess. With that success flows ticket sales, fan interest and community involvement with your team. Milwaukee is currently experiencing such bounty with Giannis Antetokounmpo leading the Bucks to a league best record at the moment.
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