keeping bird exception

[Alex Wang <awang@mit.edu>]

There are ways of reducing the salary growth of players without 
disposing of the Bird exception (which I would like to see kept).  
One possible compromise would be to eliminate the 20% annual raises 
that are allowed in the contracts. Right now, a team with cap space
can offer a 7 year contract worth 11 times (or 13 depending on who
you ask) the first year value. If you get rid of the 20% raise, 
teams can only offer 7 times the first year value, which would 
drastically reduce the "market value" of free agents.

Another possibility would be to require all teams to sign or renounce
their own free agents before signing any new free agents. That would
prevent teams from making a big free agent signing and then taking
advantage of the bird exception to re-sign their own free agents and
go over the cap. Again this would reduce the "market value" of free
agents.

Alex