Hoops

NBL insists Tigers under cap

Blazefan, if I read you correctly, the Tigers players are on good incomes because of the external component of the additional payments (which are legal). What's to say they can't earn that additional external income somewhere else. The point I make is that the Tigers are a superior team, well ahead of any other in the league. How do they get to be in this financial position that they can't achieve it somewhere else if they are being paid honestly under the salary cap. My suggestion is that none of the players are doing any other paid work other than playing in the NBL. I suggest whatever their incomes are, they are being paid from one source. Now you can make up your own mind on how much this one source is worth, $840K or closer to $2M.

Spelling intended because the value of both is about the same.

In August 2002, it took a few auditors just one weekend to go through the books of the Canterbury Bulldogs and declare them over the NRL celery cap. As a result they lost all of their competition points and went from first to last.

As I suspect this process would have been a little more complicated than if it had to be done on an NBL team (at least twice as many players and a cap of around $3 million back then), why doesn't the NBL order the auditors in?

While the obvious answer is that the NBL has too much to lose if the Tigers were found guilty, perhaps it's actually because the NBL know there's nothing wrong and the Tigers (cough, splutter, cough) are well and truly within the cap guidelines at stated by the NBL.

Please stay with me on this one.

A quick look at NBL.com.au says about the cap "The A$810,000 includes all player payments, for example superannuation, car allowance, and accommodation." "Players may earn additional income from sources not linked to the club they are contracted to (eg. outside employment) provided all details have been lodged with, and approved by, the NBL."

To me this sounds like the Tigers have simply submitted all their player contracts which add up to a value equal (or less than) $810K. They then lodge all the additional income details for each player from sources external to the club. These documents bring the overall player salaries to their 'true' levels or what we all speculate them to be. The NBL approves these details and the Tigers go and win this year's title.

Going back to the NRL, players can earn as much as they can get from external sponsorship, just so long as the sponsor has no ties to the club. If there is an association between a personal sponsor and club sponsor, the amount counts towards the cap.

In any case and as much as I hate to admit it, I think the Tigers can actually be within the celery cap without too much trouble. The NBL are fully aware of this and approved all outside income sources anyway. It can't be this simple can it? Whether or not there is enough outside money to continue this in the future remains to be seen.

I agree KC - those suggesting we increase the cap are living in la la land.

Policing the cap just seems to me to be beyond the NBL when it clearly has very limited resources.

Isaac, when you say "make the salary cap more realistic" do you just mean increase it? If so, won't this just defeat the purpose of the cap, which is set at a figure some of the smaller clubs can supposedly afford?

Also, regardless of the size of the cap, unless you can police it, why bother having one?

I say forget the salary cap and try to improve the credibility of the points cap, though that seems like a tall order, because it is very hard to find an objective measure that can't be rorted in one way or another.

Off course the Tigers are paying the amount on the players' contracts that are submitted to the NBL. Why wouldn't they? Why wouldn't they want the NBL to see these contracts? What Harmison is not looking into is that these contracts may not be the only ones in existence. For all we know and for all he knows, each player may have 3 contracts but only submitted one to the NBL. A contract is a piece of paper. You can write anything you want on it provided both parties agree to it and sign. I am extremely disappointed that the check Harmison makes is limited to the details of the actual contracts presented to the NBL. A statutory declaration is not a lie either that the club is paying the players the amount shown on the contract. They are in fact paying that amount to the players. They are just not revealing that they may be paying them other amounts also.

I guess its hard to police the salary cap with out side payments and all that, so all they can do is go by the contract sent into the league, another way would be to raise the cap to around say $1.2 million, i dont think many, if any would be able to pay above that and those teams that cant afford (eg Wollongong and Spirit) that should be able to drop into a 2nd division with say a cap of $600k (thats why i like isaacs 2 division 16 team idea), i think this would hugely limit cap cheating as i dont think too many rosters would be worth more than the 1.2 million and this gives the big time owners a bigger budget to work with to legally get the players they want, and stops the cheaper rosters getting flogged every week as they would probably do very well in a lower division with a 600k cap, and would be able to remain sustainable instead of competeing with the cowans and mcpeakes.
With the points cap, i think the limit is reasonable at 68 if they lowered it too much it would just cut out those fringe starters/good bench players say if it went down to say 65 the tigers for example would probably cut say crosswell or corletto and replace them with a rookie so they could keep there awesome starting 5, i think some players should be rated a bit better though, as barlow IMO as an olympic starter should be a 10, but there are also many guys rated too high in the 7-8 region, so if they could fix that somehow the points cap would be a decent system.
I think if you are an olympian/Word Champs at the most reasent event you are a 10 and the nbl 1st team from the previous year should be 10's, and new imports everyone else should be a 9 down, there are some iffy 10's, then loyalty points should not be transeferred, and maybe make it so only say 2 players on each roster can use internal ratings, this still rewards development but also stops teams absolutely stacking there teams by having players on really low internal ratings, yes this means some teams will lose some players they have developed but this is what the system is meant to do, spread the talent and increase parity, the only other exemption should be say a month out from the season guys like Luke Martin and Luke Kendall should be able to get a gig at any team regardless of points, have a set date, almost like a draft day or something, to keep them in the league, say for example if only 1 team wants them they can sign with them for 1 season, eg the spirit and luke martin then have to be fit in under the points cap after that, if more than one team wants them they have to play for the team with the most spare points, eg if say the spirit and the tigers want kendall, the spirit have 4 points, tigers have 1 point so kendall has to play for the spirit, if he refuses to do this, he is out of the league, this will keep the parity reasonably even and keep these guys like kendall in the league, which is only a good tihng. Teams cant be dodgy and say they want a player to stop other teams getting them, if in my previous example they say they want kendall, and they are the team with the most points they HAVE to sign him. Lets face it in most seasons there wont be too many starter level players or stars availble at that point, so giving some of the bottom level, cheaper rosters with some points to spare say the spirit as an example a decent bench player say a kendall or martin wouldnt exactly turn them into contenders and i doubt too may other teams wouldnt really be too upset, and keeping guys like that involved is only good for the league IMO.