This has been a historically bad season for parity in the NBA. Two teams, the Golden State Warriors and the Cleveland Cavaliers, have steamrolled their respective conferences en route to a Finals matchup against each other for the third consecutive season, a league record. Additionally, nearly everyone could have predicted this Finals matchup after July 4th of last season, when the Warriors, utilizing the rapidly-inflating salary cap, were able to add Kevin Durant, a top-five player in the NBA, to a team that had just been to two consecutive NBA Finals and set the record for the best regular season record in NBA history. This made the entire NBA regular season pointless to watch for fans of any other team, as Golden State destroyed everyone in their path, and there was no one even close to them in terms of quality, as they did not lose a playoff game on the way to their third consecutive Western Conference title. However, there is a solution that would've made this superteam scenario impossible and restore competition and close games to basketball: salary arbitration, a staple of baseball finances that helps a sport where player control is almost entirely in the hands of the team.
As a definition, salary arbitration is a process by which after a player's third season in the MLB (or their 2nd season if the player qualifies as a "Super Two") where both the team and the player submit a salary figure, and an independent arbiter selects which salary figure the player will receive for the upcoming season. However, typically players and teams agree to contracts in order to avoid the showdown sentiment attached to a legal arbitration hearing, and this allows baseball, a sport without a hard salary cap, to maintain balance as teams are simply unable to pay superstar players little to no money after their third season in the league. One would think this "superteam" era we are witnessing in the NBA would happen in baseball, but that is simply not true, as we have not seen a repeat National League champ since 1972, and arbitration is a major cog in maintaining a relatively even top-to-bottom power structure in the game. The Warriors, without arbitration in place, were able to make Stephen Curry, a two-time NBA MVP, the 4th-highest paid player on his own team. Additionally, neither of Draymond Green or Klay Thompson are on max contracts, despite the fact that both are two of the top 15 players in the NBA, allowing Golden State to have the necessary cap space to sign Durant.
Had arbitration been in place, Curry, Green, and Thompson would've been paid max deals, making the Durant signing impossible, allowing him to either remain with the Oklahoma City Thunder or sign with the Washington Wizards. These teams would've presented a serious challenge to either Golden State or Cleveland, respectively, re-creating entertaining playoff series with those teams while also enabling teams such as the Houston Rockets and San Antonio Spurs to also contend. This system could prevent these future superteams, which began when LeBron James initially left Cleveland to join the Miami Heat with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, however, even then Miami played multiple seven game series in the ECF against Paul George and the Indiana Pacers. The outcome was in always in doubt, as the Heat were nowhere near as talented as the Warriors, lowering the dominance of one team to create an exciting product to watch, proving how this trend needs to be stopped before it can grow, as this will further eliminate small market teams from ever contending, a difficult continuation of the ripple effect of the introduction of free agency.
