These arent completely related. The skyrocketing franchise values sort of seem to do with the new TV deal, and the players were too stupid or unified to demand a bigger slice of this. And the owners could still ruin them on BRI with a simpler system. With the checks and balances in place what the players 'get' on the whole really just comes down to the BRI%.
Take the NFL owners, they ruined the players by forcing them to take a smaller share of revenue and on the 'time value of money'. The players share escalates over time and must 'average' 47% over the length of the deal but when the new TV deal kicks in its still very low, so the owners get a ton of money in their pocket early on from a cash flow perspective which obviously increases the value of it for them. They were able to accomplish this while keeping the relative simplicity of their free agency and cap dynamics.
Honestly, I dont understand why this is a tough sell? Isnt moving closer to a free market system without restrictions of the MLE, bi-annual exception, etc move the players closer to getting their true market value in free agency? If you told the players 'we are getting rid of the MLE and all exceptions that let you go over the cap, but the cap is going to go to $73M which is just about the same as current cap + MLE + other exceptions, that sounds pretty reasonable to me.
I agree the CBA is old CBA with some tweaks like max contract went from 6 years / 10.5% raises to 5 years / 7.5% raises, basically the big stuff is whats
listed here and then there were some other tweaks as well. When I say I dont know it, I mean I knew what was listed here in 2005 but I havent been able to spend enough time on the 2011 one to be able to spit out these specific rules from memory like I used to be able to. As a fan thats what I dont like, when a player signs I dont know the dynamics well enough to truly analyze and intelligently opine on it, which reduces my enjoyment of free agency and unfortunately my interest as well.
I'm not saying this in a jerk 'oh yeah' type of way, but I sort of think you are understating the complexity of the CBA. I know the changes you mentioned are minor additions but it doesnt seem that complex to you because you can rattle them off the top of your head. For fans that dont have the time, or cant find the resources to understand it to the level that you do, if you just ask them point blank they will probably say 'its complex, there are so many rules and I dont know them all'. I guess my point is not that its got all that much more complex, but as I lose touch with it I have come to believe that its a little too complex in general and that could probably be avoided.
As for the peaks and valleys in payroll, lets take the Nets. They traded for Joe Johnson, PP & KG all for contracts that had less salary cap commitments (over the lengths of the deals), they also traded for Deron and could resign him because they had his bird rights. These dynamics pushed them further above the 'soft cap' for a longer and longer period of time, and now to have any significant salary cap space in 2015/16 they need to completely stop signing anyone and/or trade away Johnson or Deron and not resign Lopez just because the alternative is to collectively 'lose talent' if they dont. Now to rebuild they have to go through a very significant valley and a real big part of that is because they were allowed to push themselves so far into these cap problems. Its almost like a 'pay day' loan, they arent completely responsible for the poor financial management of the people that use them, but that dynamic allows them to push themselves further into financial ruin. Or like a credit card that allows someone to continue to spend more than they make when eventually you have to completely reverse that trend to pay it off just to get back to a zero balance.
The GMs arent completely confused, no but I do think the simplicity would make it a bit easier to project and there wouldnt be these exceptions to go above a cap that and drive up the balance on that credit card to the point that the talent is decaying and they have to go and completely tear it all down. Its sort of saving themselves from themselves.