Can Danny?

The Boston Celtics might not be able to make a move because of it. The Phoenix Suns might have to dump a player to avoid it. The Mavericks don't care about it. Wasn't the luxury tax put in place to help the smaller market teams and stingier owners?

For all the talk of changes this year to fix the game, the one that should happen first is raising the luxury tax by around 15 million. Whenever you hear a story about financial issues in the NBA, it isn't that a team can't afford its payroll, it's that the owners aren't able to spend what they want because they will run into the luxury tax. We could have one of the stingier ownership groups in the league but if the luxury tax was raised to 80 million, I really don't think that Wyc and friends would have a problem spending more money.

Besides the fact that the NBA trade deadline and offseason has become more about economics than basketball, this move will also save hapless NBA GM's from themselves. For most teams, one or two bad contracts means certain doom, or at least, an arrested development. The Cavaliers might be a move or two away from competing but they won't be able to make those moves because they can't sign anyone without going over the cap and nobody is going to deal for overpaid guys like Larry Hughes and Eric Snow. Danny Ainge started his tenure with one major mistake, adding Raef Lafrentz's salary, and has been trying to get out from behind the eight ball ever since. Isiah Thomas's first move was to add Stephon Marbury and Penny Hardaway's huge contract... and he's been adding payroll ever since. The Dallas Mavericks wouldn't be the Mavericks if it wasn't for Cuban's deep pockets. Don Nelson was able to build his team even after spending 10 million on Shawn Bradley, Evan Eshmeyer, and Tariq Abdul-Wahad and another 8 million on Erick Dampier.

Of course, the one problem here is that most GM's will just go out and use the extra space to overpay mediocre players because they are suddenly able to. Still, intelligently run teams will be able to hold onto their players and build deeper teams if they don't have to live in fear of a looming tax threshold.

And yes, maybe there are some teams that wouldn't want to go all the way to the higher tax threshold. But is that really a problem? What's wrong with creating an NBA middle class? If George Shinn or Donald Sterling only want to spend 70 million on their team, then their GM will have to deal with that. But the Suns and Warriors shouldn't be held to that same budget and then punished when their young players turn out to earn higher contracts than the tax allows.

Before the NBA starts to work on the game itself, it should get the focus back onto the game itself. Let's focus back on defense and rebounds as opposed to dollars and cents.