Should the NBA have a minimum salary cap in addition to the maximum cap?

One of the biggest fights in the next CBA is over the salary cap. The league, most notably the commissioner David Stern, and Ted Leonsis of the Wizards have either spoke in favor of a hard cap, or consider it an important issue. The players want the cap to be soft, where the luxury tax would remain in place.

I'm in favor of a hard cap, but with a provision that there is a minimum salary cap as well. Here is why a minimum and maximum salary cap is good for the owners:

1. The league will in the long term has a much better chance of becoming more competitive from top to bottom given that there is a clear maximum amount of money. The NHL has a hard cap and in the five years since their one year lockout, we've seen several #8 seeds beat #1 seeds in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, so the playoffs become quite a draw and are exciting every round.
2. The minimum cap serves as kind of a "membership fee" that ensures that a team is financially solvent or in other words in good shape. This also discourages teams from trying to "save money" in and of itself.

This is why a minimum and maximum cap is good for the players.

1. In an era of the hard maximum cap, the players will compete harder for the limited dollars available to them. They still are rich with or without the maximum cap. The best players will tend to go where the money is, and with a maximum cap, we will see more star free agents change teams whenever they feel that they deserve a bigger payday, and they'll go toward teams with more dollars available.
2. The minimum cap also is an insurance policy for the players that they will get a fair salary. The minimum cap will definitely be more than the minimum salary x15 guys, so no team will be allowed to try to have 15 guys paid at the lowest possible salary (not like that's very possible anyway).


I say for starters make the minimum cap $45 million and the maximum cap $60 million. This is basically with the understanding that a number of contracts expire this year anyway; maximum deals will have to be restructured; and right now 22 out of 30 teams are paying more than $60 million this year anyway, with a number of these teams likely losing money while doing so. If the NBA is going to survive, the owners need to be making money, and I don't want players to lose their jobs, but if they want to keep them and continue to live a decent living, well, they still will be able to do so after the CBA change as long as they keep their finances straight.

no salary cap!

Any advantage to all the teams in the NBA with NO salary cap?