In recent years the Los Angeles Lakers, the Boston Celtics and the Dallas Mavericks all had salary obligations that thrust them $20-$40-million into the luxury tax in order to keep their squads near the top of the league's pecking order. It may not have been the most financially prudent way to run things, but the cost of an NBA Championship has never been cheap and these teams were willing to pay to play and their expenses made them the last three teams to win an NBA title. 

In the last year, though, something changed. It wasn't a seismic shift, rather it was a gradual leaning away from the spendthrift ways of recent memory and into an age more in line with the world's economic necessities: austerity. While that word has been more suitably ascribed to Greece's crumbling economy or the prerogatives of middle America, billionaire NBA owners are finding value in belt-tightening over win-at-all-costs cash hemorrhaging and they are reshaping the landscape of the league as a result. 

The first real sign of change came last February at the trade deadline. Boston was 41-14, had won 10 of their last 15 games and sat comfortably atop the Eastern Conference with a real shot to make a repeat trip to the NBA Finals. At the deadline, though, they traded starting center Kendrick Perkins to Oklahoma City for combo forward Jeff Green. 


Without Perkins, Boston lost their edge, and Boston's advantage over their opponents was always as much mental as it was physical.


There was tremendous outcry from Celtics faithful after the trade. In their eyes the club had lost more than a player, they had lost their identity. While Kevin Garnett was and remained the team's heart and soul on defense, Perkins' ability to play physical and intimidate under the basket was an essential component to Boston's defensive attack. 

"I wasn't surprised to hear that Perkins cried for most of the day Thursday," offered ESPN's Bill Simmons, an avowed Celtics lifer, after the trade. "[I wasn't surprised to hear] that Boston's veterans were infuriated by the trade...Like every other Celtics fan, I watched him go from nothing to something. I certainly never imagined watching Perk play for another team."

Without Perkins, Boston lost their edge, and Boston's advantage over their opponents was always as much mental as it was physical. Trading him seemed akin to capitulation, an unheard of act for the Celtics, and the Celtics went 15-16 the rest of the regular season and were bounced in the second round of the Playoffs shortly thereafter.

However, the Perkins trade was just the tip of the iceberg. As essential as he was to Boston's identity, he was still the team's fifth-best player, and while he played his role to perfection, he was at best just a role player for the club. The same cannot be said of Tyson Chandler with Dallas or Lamar Odom of the Lakers, two far more crippling losses absorbed by the league's two most recent Champions. 


Mark Cuban, Dallas's jubilant owner, has never been one to shy away from signing seven-foot centers to ludicrously lavish deals. Heck, he doled out $154-million combined to Erick Dampier, Desagana Diop and Brendan Haywood, and yet he balked at re-signing Chandler, the piece that just about every observer credits with giving Dallas the defensive edge that they needed to win their first-ever title last June. Cuban has never NOT spent money on a center when he's had the chance, and yet the one time he almost had to he never considered doing it for a second. 

The Lakers, meanwhile, sent away not only the reigning Sixth Man of the Year in Odom, but they sent away their greatest insurance policy against any (inevitable) injury to Andrew Bynum. He was their X-Factor, their weapon that no team could counter. No less than Kobe Bryant had this to say after Odom was dispatched: 

"I don't like it. I trust management knows what they are doing...but it's tough."

Both Dallas and Los Angeles have struggled out of the gate this season, Dallas' defensive rating has dropped from seventh last year to fourteenth this year, while LA has gone from ninth to eighteenth in points per game after Odom's departure. Neither team looks anywhere close to Championship caliber, and in a shortened season a club's margin for error is razor thin compared to a typical 82-game schedule. 

So why, then, would these teams that were seemingly perennially chasing titles suddenly shut their checkbooks after years of unchecked spending? 

The new CBA. 

Yes, that much derided piece of legalize that formalizes the agreement between the league and its players has actually managed to affect change with regards to competitive balance in a way that few saw possible on the date of its ratification. 

The Celtics sent Perkins away over fears that his upcoming free agency would significantly handcuff their future flexibility (Oklahoma City extended him on a five-year, $40-million contract last spring) just based on projections of what the new CBA might look like. The Mavericks allowed Chandler (and Caron Butler, J.J. Barea and DeShawn Stevenson) to walk for fear that committing longterm to any of them would put too much focus on the present and not enough on their future ability to remain competitive. The Lakers, who were not thrilled with the money they had to pay Lamar in 2009 under the old CBA, were throwing him into every trade scenario they could imagine until they found one they could complete, which got them nothing but a trade exception in return. 


"I don't like it. I trust management knows what they are doing...but it's tough." -Kobe Bryant


"What I don't think people understand is that once a team hits the tax level the ability to improve our team is reduced dramatically," explained Cuban at the conclusion of the lockout. "In addition, your ability to make trades is reduced. So basically, if we made the move to keep everyone together with five-year deals, the team we have today is going to be the team we have for the next five years."

The fact is that while the new CBA hasn't completely evened the playing field in the league, it has begun to stem the tide of rich teams simply buying titles while less deep-pocketed outfits lay in their wake. A club cannot simply outspend their peers because to do so could have disastrous long-term effects, a fact punctuated by the moves Boston, Dallas and Los Angeles made in 2011. 


What remains to be seen is what constitutes the new normal. This offseason saw a bevy of one-year deals inked at big dollar amounts, but that may simply be a factor of a shortened free agency period. Clubs across the league are looking to create new superteams in the mold of the Miami Heat, but the Knicks are proving that there are perils aplenty to that strategy, especially when the superteam does not include two top-five players like the Heat's does. 

For now what we know is that it has become financially impossible for a club, no matter how rich, to ignore the realities of a more restrictive CBA. The very fact that Mark Cuban, who has been shamelessly using his deep reservoir of cash to try and buy his way to an NBA title for over a decade, finally won a title and then refused to spend to keep that team together says all you need to know about the plight of the rich in the NBA. Cuban may have the resources to spend as much as Sacramento and Charlotte combined on his roster, but the penalties for doing so have become so severe that not even the lure of a title can persuade him to let it happen. That may not bring Sacramento or Charlotte any closer to a Championship themselves, but it must surely make them feel like they aren't out of the chase before the season even begins. 

The price of an NBA Championship may finally be lowering after years of stratospheric costs forced the league to rewrite the rules governing team spending, but it is also now tremendously more difficult to figure out how one goes about building a contender in the new NBA since simply assembling the league's most expensive roster doesn't seem to be the magic bullet that it once was.