NBA Owners Looking to Implement ‘Carmelo Anthony Rule’?

One of the big changes NBA team owners want in the new CBA, is the severe limiting of player movement, a so-called “Carmelo Rule”. ESPN has the details: “Possibilities presented by the league as alternatives to a hard cap include: •The institution of a sliding ‘Supertax’ that would charge teams $2 in luxury tax for every dollar over $70 million in payroll, $3 for every dollar over $75 million in payroll and $4 for every dollar for teams with payrolls above $80 million. •A provision to allow each team to release one player via the so-called ‘amnesty’ clause and gain both salary-cap and luxury-tax relief when that player’s cap number is removed from the books. • Shortening guaranteed contracts to a maximum of three or four seasons. • Limiting Larry Bird rights — which enable teams to exceed the salary cap to re-sign their own free agents — to one player per team per season. • Reducing the annual mid-level exception, which was valued at $5.8 million last season, to roughly $3 million annually and limiting mid-level contracts to a maximum of two or three seasons in length as opposed to the current maximum of five seasons. •A new ‘Carmelo Rule’ that would prevent teams — as the New York Knicks did in February with Anthony — from using a Bird exception to sign or extend a player acquired by trade unless they are acquired before July 1 of the final season of the player’s contract. •The abolition of sign-and-trades and the bi-annual exception worth $2 million. • Significant reductions in maximum salaries and annual raises and a 5 percent rollbacks on current contracts. There are also still some teams, sources say, who are pushing for some sort of franchise-tag system similar to what the NFL employs as well as a restriction that allows big spending teams to exceed the annual luxury-tax threshold only twice every five seasons. Yet it remains to be seen how many of these concepts, many of which have been met with union resistance, actually become elements of a deal. Agreeing on those finer points is secondary to striking an agreement on the percentage of the revenue split, which literally shapes what the rest of the next labor pact will look like. The players are still seeking 52 to 54 percent of basketball-related income and the owners remain intent on getting the figure in the high 40s. Players earned 57 percent of basketball-related income last season.”