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CeeZar
As the article states, I agree that the salary cap isn't going away. The calculations may change, but the cap is required to keep the small market teams competitive and the wealthiest owners from dominating.
Guaranteed contracts will have unintended consequences. If this becomes a requirement, teams will be less willing to sign longer term deals as the risk increases in the later years. Total contract value for many players will likely decline as well. Maybe this is worth it for the players, maybe not. But these seem like two obvious impacts on contract negotiations if guarantees are mandated.
The players would probably like to have either shorter deals or opt out clauses anyway. The long term deals really serve the teams more since salaries aren't guaranteed anyway. Why would a player want to be locked up for 6 years when, at best, 3 of those years are guaranteed? This is especially true when due to inflation, the player is severely underpaid in the latter years of the long contract.
I agree that contract value declining could be an unintended consequence. OTOH, if I'm the players I'm pushing for either guaranteed contracts or in the alternative their slice of the pay dramatically increases. Getting paid more on each contract could help offset any insecurity from not having guaranteed money.
