Shocking news: Fan of LA/NY team with huge financial advantages favors ending salary caps so the Lakers, Knicks, Rams, Giants, and Jets can spend like the Dodgers, Yankees, and Mets. “Either spend wisely…” doesn’t apply if there’s no cap and your team has nearly unlimited money (see: Yankees).
The NBA lets you resign your players even if you’re over the cap if you’re willing to eat luxury taxes? If you build a “dynasty” level team, you can keep it together like the Warriors did (until they decided not to resign Klay). The 90s Bulls could’ve hung on a couple more seasons but Jerry Reinsdorf decided he was done shelling out. This current system already favors big market teams that are able and may be willing to pay the taxes if they can assemble a great roster. OKC had 3 young future HOF players on their team and blew it up because they knew couldn’t afford to keep them. Also, small market NBA teams have a disadvantage keeping/attracting free agents when they all seem to want to play in LA, NY, or Miami. If you gave those teams unlimited cap room, very few stars would ever remain with their original franchises because they’d all be joining super teams in those cities. If I was an LA/NY fan, I’d also want rules that hugely favored my teams.
If you really wanted more opportunity to keep and grow dynasties while having parity and fairness to small market teams, the non-star majority of NBAPA should band together like the non-QBs/stars of NFLPA have to get more equity instead of the top 5% taking over half the money. NBA could increase salary cap/revenue sharing so players in total get paid more, but reduce the max and supermax levels so one or two players don’t make 80%+ of a team’s payroll. If LeBron and Luka were individually capped at a peasant’s wage of $25 or $30m/year, the Lakers could afford a third or fourth “max” player and have year to year flexibility in free agency.