In honor of Tuesday night's MLB All-Star game, which has the exciting distinction of not being the Pro Bowl, I'm thinking about what this NBA offseason means for the League's relationship to those two inferior sports.
We all know that the NFL is supposedly the ultimate model of sports parity, with its rigid salary cap and careful scheduling. The MLB, on the other hand, is the place where owners can build dynasties by picking up the top free agents and adding them to already strong lineups, leaving teams like the Orioles to be all but forgotten.
For years, the NBA has existed as some sort of middle ground. There are salary caps that, though not as strict as the NFL's, prevent teams from building Yankees-like star magnets. But with powerful GMs and a long season that gives fewer opportunities for upset playoff teams, it has also been given to the kinds of dynasties that we think of when we think about baseball.
After this summer, we may need an entirely new category for the kind of polarity we will see in the NBA. What the Heat--as well as the Lakers, Celtics, Magic, and several other teams--have done is figure out how to overload on talent while staying within the salary cap. These teams have done so by promising incoming players the chance to win, thereby cementing their reputations and increasing their future market value. This is all well and good, I suppose. A combination of free market gluttony and individual sacrifice. Fine.
But what the hell is it all going to look like?
