The destination market thing is a critique I expected but:

a) small markets are always going to be disadvantaged, don’t know if there’s a way around that

b) we saw just this summer IHart leaving basically equivalent basketball situations in one of the biggest markets for one of the smallest, because of them having more money to offer

c) the best way to get endorsements is to be a good player, best way to be a good player is to go to best basketball situation for you, which is market-independent

On the contracts point, yeah that’s the toughest but there are definitely ways to smooth the effect of the cap changes and/or give caveats for existing contracts

the NBA doesn’t make accommodations for worse basketball players and they do the same for teams. if you make good decisions, win a lot of games, punishing you for doing well is anti-competitive.

The draft does this.

I imagined salary caps within an e.g. 20% bound and depending on your league position you just get some dollar amount slot. Wouldn’t compound, you’d just stay in the most advantageous spot if you were the worst team two years in a row.

But yeah would probably need caveats for existing contracts but that seems doable.