My solution to the Larry Bird rule

["Nissen, David" <DNissen@ventnds1.telstra.com.au>]

I kind of like the Idea of a soft cap with a hard cap somewhere above it.
To 
me their seems to be two issues, 1) finding a way to ensure teams have a way

to hold on to their star players (Warwick's solution is one way of 
addressing 1) and 2) ensuring that the great players get the money (by
Falk's 
first law of basketball relativity, money and respect are interchangable) 
their egos demand.

One way to help with the second issue while still maintaining a hard cap and

not screwing the less finacial teams would be for the NBA to set aside an 
amount of money for bonuses.  Bonuses could be paid to players who make the 
all star team, MVPs etc.  As long as there are a fair few of these and some 
of them encourage team play/unselfish play and look after good players 
on ordinary teams, it would be hard for players to argue that they are not 
getting the money they deserve. All they have to do to get the top dollar/ 
respect they are after is to earn it.

Any comments ?

                        - David N.
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Hey all,

My rule of the Larry Bird rule part of the lockout.

Teams are allowed to go over the cap to re-sign their own free agents,
but there is a hard cap implemented.

The hard cap (highest point over the salary cap a team can go to re-sign
its own player) would be set at 134% of  the cap.

Therefore a supposed cap of $32 million would see a hard cap of $42.88
million, with teams currently over that allowed to keep their players
until they've finished their contracts (that is due to obvious legal
repurcussions that would be associated with the current teams over that
(this year there were the Orlando Magic, New York Knicks and Chicago
Bulls).

Another thing that would be fair to both is that a player can be waived
and removed from the cap as long as they are completely paid out until
they find a new team(that would work well for the Celtics and their
troubles with Greg Minor, Pervis Ellisson and Travis Knight!).

Does that sound fair to both sides?

Warwick