I could be wrong about this but my suspicions are that the majority of owners would simply raise the CBA to 230-235 million with similar language to the current CBA and get this done.
But a simple majority is not enough. My understanding is that it requires 23 of the 30 owners to approve a new CBA and it only takes 8 to vote one down. I think that there is a group of at least 8 hardcore "poor" owners (that is, owners who want to be able to operate with a low payroll but don't want the CBT to be so high that the "rich" teams can completely price them out of the player market.
The players want more money available to them. This could also be done with a salary floor, but from what I've heard the players want nothing to do with a floor -- although they also want revenue sharing teams to spend that money on payrolls and I'm not sure how you do that without some kind of a minimum payroll. I don't know if something where a team's minimum payroll was based on the revenue sharing received with some minimum also set for non-revenue sharing teams (to keep a team like Baltimore from whining that they have a minimum payroll but Toronto, NY, and Boston don't).
I think it's primarily the veteran players who are pushing for the higher CBT. Some of them likely see the increased money going to pre-arbitration and early arbitration players as taking potential money from them. Also, with increased playoffs, there is a worry that teams will be able to spend less and still make the playoffs, so they want to make up for that by allowing the teams that are willing to spend lots of money to be able to spend even more without penalty.
So, it may take a softening of hardliners on both sides to get this done.
But his is pure speculation on my part. And I don't really have a deep enough understanding of the issues involved to seriously comment on what it would take to get an agreement.
