Re: Another cap suggestion

[Adam Suchocki <asuchocki@wireless.tellabs.com>]

Giving teams the right of first refusal on Bird Exemption players is a good idea, but
it is something the union bargained to get rid of two collective bargaining
agreements ago.  The players are against this for several reasons.  Besides stopping
a team from bidding against itself (ala Kevin Garnett and the TWolves), it restricts
player movement.  This really is seen as a problem by players and agents.  David
Robinson has publicly stated that being able to leave a bad team is more important to
him than unlimited money (of course, his idea of limited money may be 20 million a
year).  Several other players have said the same thing.  They would rather take a pay
cut to leave the team they are currently on.

Teams like the Clippers and the Canadian teams would love right of first refusal, as
they would be able to keep players who did not want to stay there (like Kenny
Anderson, Danny Manning, Danny Ferry, etc.)  Teams like Phoenix would hate it, as
they would have been unable to sign Manning and Robinson for the million dollar
exemption, because their original teams would have matched the low salary.  Players
want the ability to move to a new team, and allowing a team to match all offers would
remove that.

I still would love to see it happen, I just don't think you could ever get the
players to agree to it.

Adam