i.e. a slot that takes a cap hold of X (let's say $20M) and you can then pay that player whatever salary you think he deserves. one slot per team. that means small markets who saw it as valuable to overpay a certain player could. that also means teams like LA would use their slot on Kobe, and every mega star like Paul or Howard would have to choose to take a capped salary to play alongside Kobe, or take the uncapped slot another team in the league without a superstar would surely be offering.

but the players chose to subsidize the middle class via the superstars earning less, and I can hardly fault them. but outside of that, I really don't know how to fix it. the economic disparities of the various markets is too much to overcome without a hard cap, but hard caps are inherently unfair, sooo...