You guys are making large and uncertain assumptions. As much as a rookie pool looks likely, I bet the owners would give it up if bargaining it away would get them a couple more % points of total revenue.
If the CBA isn't done by draft time, do you really think Bill would keep a #1 pick if a rookie pool isn't an absolute certainty (which it wouldn't be at that point). And do you think he'd get top value in return, with such uncertainty?
No and no.
Wrong on
both accounts, my good man.
Wrong on
all four accounts, actually:
***
* We're making
predictions, not assumptions. You evidently
assumed we were making assumptions, and that's on
you. 
* You have a valid point about the potential trade off, but a dubious Argument, I'm afraid: If you've been following this, it is clear that the players will be
more than happy to agree to the Rookie Cap, for what should be obvious reasons: It redistributes Cap Money to
them, and away from the Rookies,
who have no votes.
* Therefore,
of course Coach Bill will hold onto that pick: We all had Line of Sight to this scenario, 20 months before that draft, when he acquired the pick, which is precisely
why he acquired the pick.
And now you suggest that, with things unfolding precisely as expected, he's going to reverse course??
***
Interesting point about the uncertainty at trade time, though, which bears further discussion, I'd say: If there is no CBA by the Draft, any trading of Picks
may be speculative.
However, it stands to reason that it's in the
mutual interest of
both players and owners to have at least
that aspect of the CBA ironed out, by then, even if it can't be committed to paper: the more explicitly the new Rookie Cap parameters are laid out, the more $$$ the voting members will get in Free Agency and other new contracts, once the rest of it is decided upon.
