Can NBA Teams Win a Championship with a Maximum Contract Player?

NBA free agency is already in full effect and everyone is making their prediction about where LeBron James will end up. Beyond LeBron, there are a few other high profile free agents and a number of teams with enough cap space to make a big splash in free agency. The surplus of teams with cap room is going to create bidding wars between these teams and ultimately the players will earn a big payday. While securing elite talent is necessary to building a competitive team, overpaying for talent and signing players to maximum contracts makes it near impossible to create a championship team under the current collective bargaining agreement.

One goal of the collective bargaining agreement signed by both the owners and the NBA players' union in 2011 was to create a competitive balance between all teams regardless of salary figures. Under the new CBA, teams who spend more than the "soft" salary cap are hit with a more severe luxury tax and lose options which offer salary flexibility. This has caused teams to reign in their spending and think twice before offering big long-term deals to players. Still, there are 19 players in the NBA today signed to a maximum contract, and 12 of those players were named NBA all-stars in 2014. Only seven of those players failed to lead their team to the playoffs last season.

While none of these max contracts are identical, as Larry Coon explains, these players occupy a substantial amount of their team's salary budget. This is the problem of max contracts under the current CBA. NBA championships are never won by one player, as it takes at least two usually three core players and solid role players rounding out the team. The Spurs won the championship this year with four key players. General managers cannot surround their max contract player with enough complimentary talent having such a restricted budget.  Only Kevin Durant and the 2012 Oklahoma City Thunder have made it to the NBA Finals with a max contract player during the three years the current CBA has been in effect, and they lost to the Miami Heat 4-1. To put that in perspective, only six teams made it to the NBA Finals without a max contract player from 1999, when the limit on an individual player's salary was created, to 2011. Of those six teams, only the 2004 Detroit Pistons and the 2011 Dallas Mavericks won the championship.

It was reported by Brian Windhorst that LeBron would be demanding a max contract from whichever team he ends up with (fun fact: LeBron James has never been the highest paid player on his respective team). In the current market, many other players will be offered a max contract. Kyrie Irving signed earlier in free agency, Carmelo Anthony will surely get a max deal, the Houston Rockets offered Chris Bosh a max contract to play in his hometown, and Gordon Hayward could even be offered a max deal.

What does this mean going forward? I would be shocked a team with a max contract player has not won the championship in the next two years before the players union can opt out of the bargaining agreement. While it has not been done yet none of the players who have tried make their teammates better the way LeBron James does. This is a guy who took a team that started Sasha Pavlovic and Daniel Gibson to an NBA Finals! Regardless of where LeBron goes it will be fun to see where not only the stars of this free agency class wind up, but also where the role players sign. The NBA landscape could be completely changed within the next few weeks.

The Veterans' Minimum in the NBA

Why do some NBA players hang around long enough for people to forget that they’re even in the league? I mean why would someone willingly choose to go from this to this in their career. Aside from the obvious love of the game most players have, what it really comes down to, is the fact that it the association, it pays to be a veteran.

A few other players you may not know are still in the league include: Ben Gordon (Bobcats), Keith Bogans (Celtics), Kwame Brown (Sixers), Elton Brand (Hawks), Hedo Turkoglu (Magic), Richard Jefferson (Jazz) and Jermaine O'Neal (Warriors). In the MLB and NFL former relevant players seldom linger around until they're forgotten, with the exception to the rare backup-QB like Brady Quinn (Rams) or Matt Hassleback (Colts).

This is a result of how each league's respective collective bargaining agreement is designed. Anyone familiar with human resources knows that a delayed compensation model rewards employees who have accumulated tenure with the organization. This is how the NFL and NBA pay their minimum wage players. Major League Baseball, on the other hand, no discrepancy exist between veteran players and rookies (at the league minimum). All minimum wage players earn the same salary of $480,000 (as of 2012).

In the National Football League players earn an increasing minimum salary each of their first three years in the league at a rate of $75,000 per year. Once a player reaches his fourth season as a professional, he is not owed another raise in pay until his seventh season and from there he is not owed another bonus until he reaches a decade of tenure in the NFL. The biggest jump in pay from the aforementioned list comes when a player enters his seventh year his minimum salary increases by a whopping $125,000.

Because of this, you seldom see non-contributing players hang around the NFL. Teams simply can not afford to pay them what they're owed. From a player's perspective, even if they believed the team would pay them the increase, it is hard for many of them to see the light at the end of the tunnel since they can't expect a raise for 3 seasons. The lack of pay incentive causes many to retire within one of those three year gaps.

The National Basketball Association, on the other hand, awards an increasing minimum salary for every year a player has been in the league. Aside from the increase between a player's rookie and second season of around 50% of their previous salary, the increase is usually a small fraction of the previous year's contract. A negligible increase from the team's perspective. From a players prospective, the fact that each season brings in a pay raise keeps people like Kwame Brown in the league.