Public reporting of NBA salaries

[TISDALE ROBERT TODD <tisdaler@ucsub.Colorado.EDU>]

Hey all,
	All this talk about salary got me thinking, so I'm out of lurk
mode for a moment.  I seem to recall that about 10 years ago I was trying
to find NBA salaries and was unable to do so.  Perhaps I just didn't know
where to look (being only a senior in college at the time), but I tried
many places. Does anyone know whether player salaries used to be kept
private, as I suspect they may have been? 
	The reason I ask may be obvious, but in case it is not, let me
explain.  Most of the time, salaries for normal working people are treated
as confidential information.  This is, at least in part, intended to help
maintain company morale and to prevent workers from asking for a raise
merely because "Joe and Sue do the same job as I do, and they are making X
dollars more than I am."  Of course, Joe and Sue may have more experience,
or just started at a higher salary, or maybe their past performance
warranted a larger raise than I got one year.  But normally the employer
does not inform the employees of any salaries other than their own,
making it something that employees worry about only on their own, for the 
most part.
	I am curious as to whether players are nearly always aiming to
become one of the highest paid players because of the public knowledge of
their salaries.  So, here are my questions:  At some point in time was a
decision made to make NBA salaries public knowledge, and if so, who made
this decision?  Was it a condition of one of the Collective Bargaining
Agreements?  If I am right and this did occur at some point in time, this
one simple change may have caused many of the problems we see in today's
NBA.  Can anyone help with the answers to these questions?  Thanks.

Rob Tisdale