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Originally Posted by iggy_oi
If you look at it in the sense that a player signs a contract in terms of dollars not a percentage of the cap they lose twice in my opinion.
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Except you can't. The players know before they put pen to paper that the dollar value of their contract will be adjusted up or down as necessary to maintain the 50% HRR. Choosing to use selective ignorance does not mean the players have "lost" anything they were not entitled to in the first place.
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If they were scheduled to make $5M for the last season on a max contract(hypothetically) and paid 20% in escrow because the league didn't generate enough revenue, they would lose $1M in pay. Then when they sign their next contract, the cap would be lower so their earning potential would also be decreased.
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This is a little too simplistic. The reason why escrow tends to be as high during the season as it is is two-fold: First, the union keeps using the escalator clause that is designed to allow the parties to account for an expected rise in HRR as a salary cap inflator instead. Hard to feel sorry for the players when they shoot themselves in the foot like that. But more importantly, the cap system was designed with the idea that as many teams would be spending above the midpoint as below, and as such, 50% of HRR should be that midpoint. Since the reality is that most teams spend above, the dollar value of the contracts consistently exceeds the players' expected share. If revenues do not come in higher than predicted, that means they give back.