top | item 29909543

(no title)

Tinyyy | 4 years ago

How much do you think Lebron James would be paid in a free market without collective bargaining?

discuss

order

defen|4 years ago

In this hypothetical are you also removing the salary cap? If anything he'd probably get more because I suspect that replacement-level players would be willing to play for less than the mandated minimum salary of about 1 million dollars.

discardedrefuse|4 years ago

Probably the same, maybe less. Professional sports players get paid on merit. What they do on the court directly translates into what a team is will to pay them.

tqi|4 years ago

Actually he would get paid much more. The NBA CBA has a "max contract" capped at 25% of the salary cap[1]. There are numerous players playing on essentially the same deal, even though there is clearly a big gap in talent. If you look at the list of salaries for the 21-22 season[2], Steph Curry is the highest paid player at $45.6M, which is only about 15% higher than the 10th highest paid player despite being significantly better.

[1] there are some other contract terms that allow for up to 35%, but those require a bunch of other non performance conditions to be met. [2] http://www.espn.com/nba/salaries

dls2016|4 years ago

I don't know, how much would he make if the NBA wasn't a monopoly?

tqi|4 years ago

Thats a good point, and I think in general I think using professional sports as an example either for or against unions is a bad faith argument because of the unique dynamics present.