Mega Trio In Miami - NBA's CBA vs NHL's

In the past 30 hours, every single sports show has been talking about the NHL's decision to reject Ilya Kovalchuk's ridculously lengthy but perfectly legal 17-year, $102 million contract with the New Jersey Devils. The contract was constructed in a way that it would pay Kovalchuk $98.5 million in the first 11 years, but only $3.5 million in the final 6 years ...

2010-11: $6 million
2011-12: $6 million
2012-13: $11.5 million
2013-14: $11.5 million
2014-15: $11.5 million
2015-16: $11.5 million
2016-17: $11.5 million
2017-18: $10.5 million
2018-19: $8.5 million
2019-20: $6.5 million
2020-21: $3.5 Million
2021-22: $750,000
2022-23: $550,000
2023-24: $550,000
2024-25: $550,000
2025-26: $550,000
2026-27: $550,000

The NHL feels that both Kovalchuk and the New Jersey Devils have no intention to honor the entire length of the 17-year contract as the player will be 44 years old when the contract expires, and the contract was only constructed to take advantage of the obvious loop holes in the NHL's Collective Bargaining Agreement and salary cap rules ...

The NBA, on the other hand, has a much tighter CBA and an extremely complex salary cap structure that it is almost impossible to take advantage of. I have talked to NHL fans before and they really had no idea why it was such a big deal in the NBA that 4 Team USA members - LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh and Mike Miller - are now playing on the same team. They are so used to the NHL's loose salary cap structure and think that it was simply 4 superstars decided to join the same team ...

But you really can't blame them. I'll bet you more than 80% of the NBA fans around the world don't really understand why the Miami Heat gave up the 6 future draft picks to the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Toronto Raptors to get LeBron James and Chris Bosh when the Heat could have just signed both of them straight-up without doing sign-and trades ...

I have seen this question being asked over and over on the internet without someone knowledgeable enough to answer the question. Without going into NBA salary cap details, I will give the short answer to the question here - because the Heat wanted to preserve cap room to re-sign both Udonis Haslem and Joel Anthony to non-minimum contracts after signing the Miami Thrice ...