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How to fix competitive balance, decrease player resting and make the NBA interesting/suspenseful again.

It's called a hard salary cap. Every team must spend 90% but not more than 100%. This works in the NFL and that is why that league has the most parity.

You have teams tanking to get a top pick. Basically the GM provides the tank by not signing enough talent. He signs a bunch of young guys on rookie contracts (so low payroll) and hopes that a few of them become productive players while they lose a lot of games and get a top pick. Players don't tank. All who make it to the NBA are competitive. They don't want to lose. Tanking is on the GM who constructs the roster and hires the coach.

As long as your team is a contender and you're hanging banners you will pay whatever luxury tax there is. It's simply not a deterrent. No way does the GSW owner decide not to keep this team together because he doesn't want to pay the "repeater tax". Teams who win also sell more tickets, get better TV deals and sell more merchandise, thus offsetting any "luxury tax".

We've all looked at the schedule and seen our team playing Philadelphia and we assume we're going to win that game. However, if Philadelphia had to spend at least 90% of the cap there is going to be some veteran talent on that team. This will make games more competitive, hence there will be fewer nights where coaches decide that their best players need rest. This won't solve all resting but if a team has a game against say Philly why play your best guys if you don't need to, especially if it's a 4 games in 5 nights kind of stretch. If Philly had to spend 90% of the cap you might not consider that game an easy win because they will be obligated to have some veteran talent. Granted the season is too long and plays too many games but that’s another discussion all together. For what it’s worth, I don’t see the NBA going away from an 82 games schedule because of the Money.

The players would never go for a hard cap because they want their money AND they want to be on the superteam. However, they would still get their money, it just might be on a different team that is below the cap. In other words the players would still be making about the same money, it just would be redistributed across the league. You would no longer have teams bottoming out like Philly and teams like GSW paying the tax. For what it’s worth, Cleveland spent a league leading $128,492,467 and GSW spent $107,526,542. GSW is expected to take the crown as the highest payroll once they resign Kevin Durrant, Steph Curry and others.

Per basketballinsiders.com NBA players made $2,839,163,081 or $94,638,769 per team in the 2016-17 season. Per Adrian Wojnaroski the projected cap for the 2017-18 season is $101 Million. The cap was set at $94.1 Million for the 2016-17 campaign, which is almost exactly what the average NBA team spent on salary for that season.

While NBA Commissioner, Adam Silver might contend that superteams are good for the NBA, because they bring huge ratings. I would counter that by stating the huge ratings are a result of fans wanting to witness something historic. Once GSW runs the over the NBA again and again, watching it will become boring and uninteresting. The huge TV ratings will drop. It will no longer be dramatic or historic.

An NFL style hard cap can be done and it would benefit the league by bringing competitive balance, decrease player resting and make the NBA interesting again.

All comments are the opinion of the commenter and not necessarily that of SLC Dunk or SB Nation.