no max contracts. Parity solved. Friend retorted that teams should be able to keep the players they drafted and the max contract with the extra money and years for your current players allows them to do that. In other words, great players would have no incentive to stay in places they would never choose to stay. Think some player from California or NY that has no desire to live in Indiana, Utah, or OKC, etc. If there is no added incentive to stay with the team that drafted you because some other team could pay you the same or more, you wouldn't stay there. It would potentially create even more jumping teams year to year.

I said how about there are cap exceptions for players you draft so you can retain the talent you developed, still a hard cap for the overall team salary, but the drafted players big salaries get some sort of exception. But then how much? And then are we back to the drawing board? Maybe not, maybe the overall league would balance out after a few years with the hard cap.

I was thinking the true hard cap alone would help quite a bit. No luxury tax junk. The Cavs have been the worst offenders by far ($54M tax bill last year! Huge one again expected this year). They'd be having a harder time this year if they didn't blow past the luxury tax line for multiple years now. The Warriors haven't been bad, I believe they are 8th or so in the league in salary and just below the luxury tax. Most people hated the Warriors last year when they had a team of almost all homegrown talent and really no max guys either.

The sudden rise in the salary cap has caused part of the issue. It allowed for Durant to go to the Warriors (although if the Warriors spent like the Cavs, they'd have been able to sign him anyways and pay the luxury tax). That won't happen every year once the caps stabilize with the new TV revenue deal. Still, NBA has never had true parity, this is nothing new. I do think a true hard cap alone would help a lot.