I have mixed feelings overall on some of the recent player movement. I think players should have the opportunity to choose where they want to live and work during their careers - free agency is good. At the same time, it's frustrating as a fan to see some of the recent situations that have played out like Davis, Harden, and (even though OKC may massively win on this trade) Paul George where players under contract have essentially forced their way to a chosen destination. None of those guys were on rookie deals, nobody made them sign their contracts, and I don't imagine any would have given their checks back if they suffered a major injury and couldn't play, so suck it up and play hard. And in general I'd rather see talent more broadly distributed through the league rather than clustered into a handful of super teams - if there's maybe a dozen guys in the league good enough to carry a team to a title, I'd optimally like to see those dozen guys on 12 different teams. That's obviously just a personal preference, and I won't knock you if you'd rather watch a couple stacked teams go at it, but I thought it was infinitely more interesting watching Durant go absolutely nuclear to carry the Nets to a win the other night.
With the starting assumption that removing the max salary is a complete non-starter, what changes might help inject a little more parity into the league? I'll acknowledge both have flaws, but these are the best ideas I could come up with:
1. Something akin to the franchise tag. Let's say that if a team offers one of its players the standard max, any team signing that player away in free agency has to give up 2 first rounders over the next 3 years. If the team offers the super max, it's 3 over the next 5 years (if the team doesn't own its picks, it can acquire them to satisfy this requirement). Obviously, what likely amount to some low firsts doesn't compensate a team for the loss of a supermax level player, but it does take some leverage away from a player trying to force a trade before he becomes a free agent. It also makes it harder for teams to acquire multiple stars from outside the organization - KD and Kyrie, for example, may not have been able to collude to go to Brooklyn, and even if they did, Brooklyn certainly wouldn't have the assets left to trade for Harden too.
2. Keep the max salaries, but make it harder for teams to fit or build around 3 max contracts. For example, what if a team acquiring a 3rd max contract (defined as 25% of the cap or greater, through FA signing or trade) was automatically hard capped? This allows a team like the pre-KD Warriors to stay together, but it really puts the onus on teams to develop a third guy and makes something like this year's Nets incredibly hard to build any depth around (they would need to dump 2 of Harris, Dinwiddie, and Jordan to stay under the hard cap).