Slip through the ‘Nets’: Payroll legal, but NBA wanted harder cap During negotiations to create its current collective bargaining agreement, the NBA did its best to limit the amount of money its teams would be able and willing to spend on their rosters by implementing a much more punitive luxury tax system, one that officially goes into effect this season. But that more punitive system wasn’t enough to prevent the Nets from shelling out millions of billionaire owner Mikhail Prokhorov’s personal fortune this offseason. Between completing their blockbuster draft night trade with the Celtics, re-signing Andray Blatche and signing Andrei Kirilenko, Shaun Livingston and Alan Anderson, the Nets sent their payroll soaring to more than $100 million for the coming season, which means they’ve also committed to paying a massive luxury tax bill of roughly $87 million next year. “I would say it’s no secret that we went into collective bargaining seeking a hard cap,” NBA deputy commissioner Adam Silver — one of the main architects of the current CBA and who will replace David Stern as commissioner when Stern steps down Feb. 1 — told The Post Wednesday after speaking at the league’s Rookie Transition Program in Florham Park. “So, for the long-term health of the league, we would rather do more to level the playing field among our teams, so the teams that have disparate resources are all competing with roughly the same number of chips so to speak.” “What I’ll add is that what we’ve seen with the Nets, ultimately there’s no prohibition if you’re willing to pay a very substantial tax — there’s no prohibition on signing the players they did, but the new rules also dramatically limit those players that are available to sign, especially once you move into the tax. So we’ll see [what happens].” The transition from the previous luxury tax system, which penalized teams one dollar for every dollar they went over the tax threshold, to the new one that includes an escalating pay scale for every $5 million teams go over the threshold, was supposed to reign in spending and help level the playing field. Nevertheless, it didn’t prevent teams from being able to load up on high-salaried players as the Nets did — as long as they were willing to pay a substantial tax bill after doing so. The Nets certainly will fall into that category. They are set to pay out more in luxury taxes alone this season than any team in the NBA is currently set to pay in salaries. The Knicks have the second-highest committed salaries for next season, at a little less than $86 million, according to shamsports.com. While half of the tax will be distributed to all non-tax paying teams — while the other half is used as a source of funding for the league’s revenue-sharing program — there have been plenty of examples of championship contenders having to give up key pieces of their teams to help ease the burden of the new tax system. There is no better example than the Thunder, after reaching the Finals, trading James Harden to Houston before last season to avoid going beyond the tax threshold. Even the two-time defending champion Heat opted to use the amnesty clause on Mike Miller, who started the last four Finals games during their run to the title last season, in order to ease their tax burden. Still, Silver isn’t ready to say the system isn’t working because the Nets are willing to go to places where, apparently, few other team are in terms of their payroll. I think before, even as someone who was and is a proponent of a harder tax, I don’t want to declare the sky is falling yet because they are doing what is permissible under the rules,” Silver said. “There were only certain players they were able to spend that money on. “Does it give a team a competitive advantage when they have the ability to spend far more than other teams?” Silver said. “Absolutely.” ... And it’s something we pointed out to the union in bargaining, “There’s a correlation between the ability to spend and success on the court,” he continued. “It’s far from a perfect correlation, however, so we ’ll see how it plays out. “But, so far, they are playing by the rules, and we’ll see whether that brings them the success they are hoping for.” 其他29队：保安 保安～可以让人一直签球星 签了又签 签了又签吗？ Mikhail Prokhorov表示：有钱臭了吗？ ╭ ╮(╯▽╰)╭ ╮ --

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