#Nba rule changes free#

In some cases, they made it significantly harder for teams to create cap space. So let's look at some of the rules that enforced that reality, and how they were changed immediately after Jordan's retirement in the 1999 CBA. As a result, it functionally bound the overwhelming majority of superstars to their original team for the duration of their primes. The one that existed during Jordan's peak, though, was still built around the only reality the league had known to that point: superstars staying put. The modern salary cap is designed to encourage player movement.

#Nba rule changes free#

It may have only happened twice in that first decade, but in the summer of 2019 alone, four different All-NBA players changed teams in free agency. Teams spend years planning to have cap space in a specific moment because free agents change teams so frequently. Imagine something like that happening today. A third, Juwan Howard, tried to leave the Washington Bullets for the Miami Heat, but failed because the league ruled that the contract was illegal and that Miami had miscalculated its cap space. The other was Shaquille O'Neal, whose hometown fans infamously told him they didn't want him back at the price he was demanding. One was a 34-year-old Dominique Wilkins, who had already been traded a few months earlier. From the onset of unrestricted free agency in 1988 and Jordan's second retirement in 1998, only two reigning All-NBA players changed teams through free agency. In fact, superstars were largely hesitant to explore unrestricted free agency at first. As big a win as this was for players leaguewide, it didn't lead to the immediate formation of superteams. This all changed four years into Jordan's career, when the 1988 CBA finally granted players unrestricted free agency once they'd hit certain criteria. That compensation was either negotiated between the two teams as a sort of trade, or decided unilaterally by the commissioner if the two sides could not agree. If a team chose to let a player walk, the original team was granted compensation. Teams were granted the right of first refusal on any contract offered to their own players, essentially making every player whose contract expired at that point the equivalent of a modern restricted free agent. The free agency adopted then had little in common with modern free agency. The NBA didn't grant any sort of free agency until 1976, and it only did so to settle a 1970 lawsuit brought about by Oscar Robertson. In fact, even the limited movement of the 1990s was an enormous shift from the league's early history. The free agency enjoyed by modern players is a relatively new phenomenon. To understand why, we need to venture back several decades to the very origins of free agency. While free agents were free to do as they saw fit for most of Jordan's career, the rules in place at the time made it almost impossible for superstars to actually use free agency to build their own contenders. So why didn't, say, Charles Barkley, Patrick Ewing and Reggie Miller team up to oppose him? It's simple: the rules didn't allow it. They are a response to the last superteam.īut Jordan reigned over the NBA for most of a decade and deprived many of that era's greatest players of championships in the process. Superteams are not an organic element in the NBA ecosystem.

When LeBron James couldn't get past the Boston Celtics, he joined Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh in an effort to take them down, and when James similarly intimidated Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant, they united to win the Golden State Warriors two championships. In the modern NBA, new challengers arise to face the champion every year. Jordan revealed in Episode 7 of ' The Last Dance' that he told Phil Jackson at the time that he had 'no more challenges.' Michael Jordan has cited a number of compelling reasons for his surprise retirement in 1993, but one stands out as utterly perplexing in a modern context.