to have been put in to hurt small market teams instead of help them).

1. The supermax contract does not count against the salary cap or the luxury tax. So whatever the difference is between giving the player the max and supermax would not count.
e.g., if Giannis would cost 35 mill for a max and 45 mill for a supermax then that last 10 million would not count towards the cap or the luxury tax.

2. The difference is paid by the league in the shared revenue (cost sharing). The details on this are fuzzy but it would be a step in the direction of more cost subsidizing from the big markets (seems pretty minimal considering there are only a handful of supermaxes and it's only the difference that would be paid).

3. The difference does NOT count towards the players share of basketball related income (I'm not sure I have the right term here, BRI?). So the NBAPA would be "throwing" the extra money away when players don't take the super max because they would essentially be getting less of the BRI.

(Note: I would rather get rid of player maxes and go to a hard cap but that is beyond unrealistic).