[Senator Clay Davis]

The Lakers would have had to offer Durant a 40% ownership share in the team to get him last summer. They are a disaster right now, and hopefully the draft Lonzo too so they can be an even more highly publicized disaster. But the Lakers (and Knicks) are the reason there will never be a hard cap. The NBA dreams of the day they can both be good again, and if you put a hard cap that ensures it'll never happen or never happen for very long. The luxury tax is extremely punitive now so I think it's pretty much fine as is.

If you took out Golden State and Cleveland, the NBA would have great parity. Unfortunately for the league until they are in decline there's no intrigue. I kinda like the idea of offering both of them the chance to skip the entire regular season next year in exchange for taking the #8 seed in the playoffs. I guarantee you Cleveland would take it. More difficult for the Warriors to do so with the West still being much more difficult. At least there'd be more intrigue.