The NBA’s Latest Attempt to Promote Competition: $200-Million Contracts
What does it take to keep a basketball player from leaving his team? Some Utah Jazz fans are hoping a billboard will help. With the team’s season over, its 27-year-old star Gordon Hayward is eligible to enter free agency and likely to entertain enormous contract offers from several teams in July. In anticipation, some Salt Lake City residents have chipped in to emblazon his likeness and the slogan “STAYWARD” on a massive sign near the arena.
Ultimately, though, whether Hayward re-signs in Utah may hinge not on a billboard, but on the NBA’s latest attempt to keep its 30 teams competitive. Under a new provision called a “designated-player exception” in the National Basketball Association’s collective-bargaining agreement, the Jazz could offer Hayward roughly $70 million more over the next several years than any other team—but only if he’s named to an All-NBA team as one of the top six players at his position on Thursday.
This award-contingent possibility, also called a “super-max contract,” is partly intended to help small-market teams hold on to stars who might otherwise leave for more tantalizing destinations like Los Angeles, New York, and Miami. More importantly, though, it speaks to a fundamental question the NBA has been grappling with recently: In such a star-driven sport, is it possible to establish a level playing field? And even if it is, is it the league’s job to do so?
It’s clear why this topic is coming up right now. , a team led by LeBron James has won the NBA’s eastern to make that seven. that this year’s championship will come down to an unprecedented third consecutive showdown between the Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors are looking increasingly prescient; in the playoffs so far. That’s led to that the league isn’t doing enough to keep competition at a healthy level, a sentiment with which the NBA’s commissioner Adam Silver . Meanwhile, rather than aim for the playoffs, where the best-case scenario is getting crushed by one of the league’s juggernauts, some teams appear to be “”—that is, purposely performing poorly in order to secure prime draft picks and maximize the chances of signing a future superstar.
