NBA free agency is five months away, and teams have already taken extreme measures so they can offer Anthony Davis, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving the maximum amount of money they’re legally permitted as soon as they possibly can.

Major League Baseball’s free agency began more than three months ago. Bryce Harper and Manny Machado remain unsigned. Dallas Keuchel and Craig Kimbrel are waiting for teams to stop twiddling their thumbs. Meanwhile, spring training starts in a week.

Baseball players can be paid anything they can convince teams to pay in the sports economy that most closely resembles a free market, but they are angrier than they have been in a quarter-century. Basketball players have their earning potential artificially deflated by a salary cap, and yet they have tilted the balance of power their way.

That contradiction shows that it’s not just a torrent of 3-pointers that is propelling the NBA or an epidemic of slow games that is hobbling MLB. It’s the economic systems of the two sports that are driving them in opposite directions.

Baseball is the only major North American league without a salary cap, a landmark achievement for the players’ union that earned players the right to earn whatever the market will bear with no restrictions on the length or dollar amount of contracts.