WHILE a single collective-bargaining agreement will emerge from the National Basketball Association (NBA) lockout, it is becoming evident that a dual set of operational rules will be in place, one for teams operating below the luxury tax and another for those operating above.
Stay below and flexibility, salary-cap exceptions and greater access to the free-agent and trade markets will remain in place.
Operate above and you had better be content with what is in place on your roster, because it won’t be getting much better.
Which (as always) brings us to the Heat.
By 2013-14, the contracts of LeBron James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade will total $56 million. Factor in the required contracts to fill out a roster and the Heat would be hard up against the luxury-tax threshold.
The upshot? If the Big Three experience is not going to prove transitory, then James, Bosh and Wade will have no choice but to demonstrate their unique versatility.
Bosh will have to accept minutes at center, because he could stand as good as it gets in the middle.
James will have to consent to more time in the post, if only because there will not be another post-up presence walking through the door.
Wade will have to acquiesce to minutes at point guard, because, as has been the case for more than half a decade, he remains the team’s best option at the position.
No, Bosh does not enjoy banging in the middle. Yes, James has displayed limited interest in post play. And more than once, Wade has stressed he is not a point guard.
But the only way three (near-) max salaries work in the NBA’s likely new world order is for those three players to, in essence, serve as six, set their unique versatility in motion.
Based on some of the draconian policies that could be set in place for the league’s high-end spenders, it is possible down the road that only minimum-scale salaries and rookie-scale prospects will be permitted to fill out a LeBron-Wade-Bosh roster.
That could mean eventually trading the likes of Udonis Haslem, Mike Miller, Joel Anthony, and perhaps a newly signed Mario Chalmers for draft picks, as the Heat did with the selloff of Michael Beasley in 2010.
The alternative, of course, would be to discard one of the Big Three, with the contract of each reaching the $20 million mark by 2014-15. That well could be what those who are framing the new collective-bargaining agreement are seeking.
But before dismissing the prospect of Wade, James, Bosh and nothing but minimum-scale salaries alongside, consider what the Heat accomplished last season.
While Haslem and Miller were available for the latter stages of the playoffs, their nagging injuries hardly had them operating at a level much greater than what could be cobbled from the minimum-scale bin. As for Chalmers, Anthony and Mike Bibby, few would place them much above the minimum-scale tier.
Through it all, James, Wade and Bosh closed within two victories of a championship, a run short-circuited as much by James’s Finals futility as any roster deficiency.
The bottom line is the stringent payroll measures in a new CBA could be as much a test of the versatility of Wade, Bosh and James as a test of the Heat’s ability to fill out the balance of the roster.
WHAT ABOUT MARIO?: Hmm, on one hand you have Mario Chalmers working out relentlessly in South Florida amid the lockout in hopes of emerging as the Heat’s starting point guard. On the other hand, you have LeBron James making Twitter pitches for Jamal Crawford and Steve Nash. For his part, Chalmers, a restricted free agent, insists his intent is not only to re-sign with the Heat, but re-emerge as the starting point guard. “Hopefully the Heat offer to me to come back,” Chalmers said. “I would love to come back and be with the same teammates, and, of course, be the starter. I want us, and myself, to get back to the same position we were in.”
IDAHO FOR ANTOINE: Yes, that is former Heat forward Antoine Walker back for another go-round with the Idaho Stampede of the NBA Development League. The shame of the situation, beyond Walker’s fall, is that he will be playing for the league maximum of $25,000. Another shame is that the NBA players’ union couldn’t see a way to divert just a slight amount of their share of the NBA pie to bump D-League pay. Currently, a final NBA cut goes from an NBA minimum of $490,000 to $25,000 in the NBDL. It would seem there should be something in between in a league operated by the NBA that largely caters to players who formerly paid National Basketball Players Association dues. Walker, 35, whose last NBA action came in 2008, played 43 games last season for Idaho, averaging 16 points, 6.3 rebounds and 3.4 assists. “I can’t wait to get back to Boise,” a statement bearing Walker’s name read. “It’s a great place to live.”
DRAFT WINDS: If the NBA Draft age limit is raised to 20 in a new agreement, it could devalue the Heat’s 2012 first-round pick. Remember, the Heat’s 2013 first-round pick goes to Cleveland (as does another by 2017, to complete the LeBron James sign-and-trade), meaning, by draft rule, the Heat would have to exercise their 2012 selection (although they would be able to immediately trade such a selection). By changing the draft rule from one-and-done to a two-year collegiate commitment, the NBA effectively would remove an entire draft class from the upcoming pool.
ON A.I., BEASLEY: Yes, Allen Iverson says he is seeking an NBA comeback. No, the Heat should not even think about it. The last thing, in a compacted season, the Heat need is anything but a ready-to-go commodity…Be assured that nothing about the agent-payoffs-AAU lawsuits involving Michael Beasley come as a surprise to the Heat. Beasley’s brief tenure in South Florida involved plenty of bizarre entourage activity, the type of drama Pat Riley couldn’t have been happier to discard.
