What is a collective bargaining agreement?

Miami Heats post collective bargaining agreement.?

• How do you feel about Miami's bench & contract situation in the coming years? Currently I with Miami's roster they can cruise through the regular season, but they only have 1 win (out of 7) against elite teams, so I don't think they have the players to make it out of the 2nd round, especially if they meat a deep team like Chicago, Boston or even Orlando. What I'm looking at is this summer, the NBA is probably going to adopt more of a NFL-type structure that allows franchise tags, and a hard cap which will allow small market teams to keep great players & compete with the big shots like Chicago, Miami, New York. After this all goes down I would say... 1. A team like Chicago (large market, attractive city) would offer a max contract to Rose and franchise a complimentary player like Boozer, Deng or Noah . 2. A team like New Orleans (small market, less attractive city) would franchise a guy like Chris Paul to make sure they keep their star player, and offer larger contracts to the 2nd tier complimentary players. Miami is basically going to lose at least 50% of their roster after this season, and it seems like after the collective bargaining is settled teams are going to be able to tie up the top players in the league, Miami is going to have to fill out their roster with scraps...even worse than what they have now. They'll probably be able to resign older guys (who have made their money & are long past their prime) like Juwan Howard & Big Z, but I don't think they'll be able to resign Carlos Arroyo for a million dollars when Arroyo can make triple that amount by signing with a team like Golden State. I'd bet after 2012, Miami makes a trade like this: Bosh to Houston for Scola & Thabeet (+2 others): http://es.pn/hfZqLo to fill out their roster. As is I don't think Houston has the roster to win a playoff series, and I'd assume they're out of quality draft picks to trade What do you think about their future?

• Answer:

  First, I'm SURE none of the big 3 leave. Second, while many are on minimum contracts, we saw last summer that players were willing to return or go to the Heat on discounts for championships (Haslem, Miller, House, Anthony) and I think the same happens this summer, definitely if the Heat win a championship, and if the MLE contract isn't taken away by CBA rules, then they hold a way to sign a discount 2nd tier player or sign various average bench players. I wouldn't worry about them.