Yep he said $62 million was the Soft cap what he didn't say was their new Hardcap was. If they put it at say $70 Million. 9 teams will have to drop players. Heck even with a Amnesty rule this year the Lakers are gonna have a fire sale.
The only way we could get CP3 is if he took a contract just like Billups. Then say the hard cap was $70 million that would give the Knicks exactly $15 million to sign 9 other players...... which is a stretch.
This is going to be interesting. The minimum salary might be lowered, the rookie scale salary might be lowered, and hopefully maximum contracts will be lowered.
If the new max contract is only 14 million dollars than that makes it all the better for us. If rookie contracts are worth less, even better. I still don't think the NBA can afford to, in this day and age, try to institute a hard cap that is as low as $70 million. A hard cap of maybe $80 million seems far more reasonable if contracts don't get scaled back.
Let's not forget that if the soft cap becomes 62 million and the salaries of Carmelo and Amar'e become scaled back due to the CBA having that potential effect then it's very well possible that the combined salary of Amar'e and Carmelo might be closer to 36 million than 40 million.
At the end of the day, though, how much do you think the NBA can really do? The NBA cannot afford to reduce the maximum salary of a player by so much, nor can it afford to institute a hard salary cap when many everyday baseball players are making $15 million dollars whereas it's mostly hall of fame-caliber players who are making that kind of money in the NBA (granted the NBA is also not nearly as lucrative).
Who knows. We can pray for scaled back maximum contracts and a higher soft cap and hard cap, and if we get our wishes, it's because God wants Chris Paul on this team!