In thinking about the LMA contract extension negotiations, an idea for the new CBA solidified in my mind. I know this could probably go in Dave's post of a week or so ago, but I'm afraid no one would see it, and I really want to see what people think of this. In fact I don't have a lot of detail, but long story short:

make all contracts a percentage function of the salary cap.

My reasons:

1. Max contracts are already based off the salary cap

2. It doesn't make sense for contracts to go up in absolute terms while the league revenue etc goes down, and it does make sense for contracts to go up faster when the NBA is booming.

3. It avoids something like us giving LMA a $72 mil contract extension (which I personally think is too much, but that's beside the point) only to have that end up being within a few mil of what Brandon Roy eventually gets under max contract rules.

4. Just seems more transparent and honest to me (but that's just me).

Some corollaries:

Players could still have relatively increasing contracts, eg a contract for 9%, 9.5%, 10% over 3 years.

I have no idea how performance bonuses or whatever would work.

I just thought of this so I'm probably overlooking a lot.

Anyway, I am pretty interested to hear what everyone thinks of this kind of percentage-based pay scale.