This is a misunderstanding of the salary cap. NBA players receive a fixed percentage of basketball related income (49-51%). Eliminating the max contract wouldn’t take money out of owner’s pockets, it would take money out of pockets of lesser players. They’d still be paying the same total amount to the players without…

My situation with Bleacher Report was very similar, though thankfully, I got out earlier. I reached FCII status, did both their writing and editing “internships,” and wrote somewhere in the neighborhood of 300 articles for them. I never collected a cent.