Another NBA Finals another appearance by Lebron James. In fact, Lebron James has been in nearly every NBA Finals since he entered the league (six total) but you won’t hear the league complaining. Viewership records are being broken regularly now because casual fans love stars. People want to know who to root for and who to root against. People also love a winner and despite his Finals record (2-4) Lebron James is definitely a winner. There doesn’t seem to be anyone in the Eastern Conference capable of stopping Lebron and co. and it doesn’t seem like that will change anytime soon. The problem is that this is what we all wanted to avoid.

Back in 2011 NBA fans had to watch greedy owners and players bicker for 161 days over what changes to make to the collective bargaining agreement. Greater competitive balance/parity was cited as one of the main reasons. The little guys were tired of rich owners buying championship teams with their deep pockets. Lebron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh became instant villains for forming their superteam. Five years later and things aren’t any different. Only four teams have played in the last four NBA Finals: the Lebron James led Miami Heat, San Antonio, Golden State, and the Lebron led Cavaliers. When you consider that Lebron was on those Heat teams and now on the Cleveland teams it’s really been Lebron vs. San Antonio and Golden State the last four years. The majority of those games were great and made for some of the best basketball we have ever seen but this is not what we all suffered for. The NBA’s CBA has failed not only the small market team but it has failed the fans.

When the new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) was put into place the goal was to cut down on super teams and spread out the superstars. To some extent it worked with Oklahoma City trading away James Harden, the Knicks let Jeremy Lin go, and Memphis traded away Rudy Gay. The harsher tax penalties teams had to take on for high salaries were making owners skittish about throwing together superteams. Lebron’s Heat teams were bringing in all kinds of money but the team had to make tough decisions such as cutting Mike Miller to shed salary. Despite stars still dictating the pecking order, things were starting to change. The change came to an abrupt end once rumors started spilling out about the new NBA TV deal bringing in a large influx of money. With the league experiencing spikes in earnings and team values the NBA cap is now expected to exceed 100 million. Suddenly the advantage those small market teams like Indiana, Milwaukee, and Memphis had is disappearing.

When the NBA decided to put harsher penalties on building juggernaut teams, small markets saw this as an opportunity to even the playing field. Afterall, Milwaukee is going to struggle attracting players more so than Los Angeles or Chicago. How can Milwaukee become a championship team if every team has an enormous amount of cap space to sign free agents? Does the NBA think that these smart teams will shell out tons of cash this offseason on mediocre players so they can lose in the first round of the playoffs again. These spikes in cap space will only create a larger difference between the rich and the poor of the NBA. Just because teams will have more room to spend doesn’t mean every team is going to spend millions on a decent team. Every team is going to be competing to sign stars or players with the potential to be stars and the rest of the league will have to fight for the scraps. The problem is that stars rarely choose to switch teams and the current CBA has made it hard to steal stars from other teams by allowing home teams to offer greater contracts and is a great player really going to choose to go to Indiana now or to Houston for the same amount of money? These large cities will give players more exposure and offer the big city nightlife that plenty of these young stars are looking for.

This looming cap boom has also changed the landscape the last couple seasons. Owners knew that with the cap experiencing such a spike that it wasn’t as tough to pay these penalties for going over the cap because in the 2016-17 season, those penalties would go away. So Cleveland, Golden State, OKC, and others built mega teams without fear of what the future holds. Cleveland has three star players signed to max deals and on top of that they sign Tristan Thompson (a bench player) to a near max deal. Golden State has three stars and is looking at possibly signing a fourth this off season and if they don’t they will probably bring back this same team next season and compete once again. Just this season, seven teams paid the luxury tax (the most ever in NBA history!) Six of those teams made the playoffs and now the championship will belong to either the highest payroll or the third highest payroll. This is antithesis of what owners were preaching. What is the point of the rest of these teams even going out there and competing if they will be out bought and out matched by superteams?

Rivalries are good for the game and the league likes to cite this as to why they don’t have any issues with the same teams playing in the Finals. Only in today’s NBA, most players are on good terms and are professional towards one another. Those days of match ups featuring blood, sweat, and tears are over. There’s really no rivalry between Cleveland and Golden State. Golden State beat them last year and they will accomplish the same this year and news flash, unless something drastic happens expect the same matchup next year and expect the same result. If you look at today’s game there are in fact very few real rivalries. There’s no actual hate in these matchups. True, the San Antonio/Miami Finals back to back were filled with emotions and anger when San Antonio came back the very next year and tore apart the team that beat them. But that was an anomaly. We aren’t seeing the next Celtics/Lakers feuds here. This is just good teams playing their best basketball and the fans love it but we deserve more. Fans are smart and will eventually notice this and expect the NBA to adjust and is the NBA ready for a post Lebron world? Currently the answer is no and this is why the NBA needs to inform the casual fans of the basketball world outside of Lebron and the Warriors.

The NBA isn’t going to mess with this formula much because viewership is up on all these star studded games. Lebron James and Steph Curry are the reason everyone is watching these games they’ll claim. Except the NBA has grown in popularity across the entire planet. Fans in other countries are shifting away from their national love of sports such as soccer. Since 1995-96, viewership is up 28% and revenue is up over 2.5 billion. The game is popular because of smart decision making and the league’s genius marketing. True, Lebron James and other stars have drawn in more viewers but the NBA is using the wrong method to attract fans to the game. Sure it’s working but telling fans to only root for 7-8 stars is causing less people to watch the other teams play. The NBA needs to do a better job is showcasing its other talent. Paul George, Marc Gasol, and John Wall never received the same exposure that the league gives to Lebron, Steph Curry, and Kevin Durant even when they were winning. Gasol and George have both been in conference finals in the last decade and casual fans barely know who they are. That’s a marketing fault that falls strictly on the NBA. As entertaining as the Warriors are, there are plenty of other teams out there playing fantastic basketball such as Utah, Portland, and Atlanta. These teams shouldn’t only be well known by the biggest fans and it doesn’t seem to be changing. Adam Silver just a couple days ago mentioned that the NBA will never have NFL style parity and that’s just something that is tough to do but throwing out the same product over and over will lead to staleness. Not every team has a star as is so if they start teaming up, then why even sit through an entire season if everybody knows the 3-4 contenders before the season even starts?

Stars still dictate what happens in the offseason. Lebron shifted things in the Eastern Conference twice by going to Miami and then back to Cleveland. Stars want to play together so superteams will always exist and the NBA can only do so much to keep them apart. By increasing the NBA salary cap so drastically they have gone in the wrong direction and have taken the idea of more parity further away. A big problem with this is that both NBA owners and the players union can opt out of the current CBA prior to the 2017 season. With small market teams likely feeling left out and with nowhere to go you can bet we’re headed for another lockout to adjust the CBA and once again it will be us fans suffering most.