The new "second apron"

[thunderdunk]

We’re basically being taxed to death because we’ve retained Steph, Klay, and Dray all these years and added JP to the fold. So essentially we’re being taxed and penalized because we’re successful at drafting players. Great system…

In all honesty, we also added Wiggins. And somehow Looney agreed to a multi-year deal at way below his market value (God bless him). So the Dubs have all these championship players who make lots of money, pay the lux tax, and keep winning. The NBA wants to break that up.

Sometimes you have to recognize that the rules are being changed, and not in your favor. I wonder if Bob will come back next year, or if he decides to stay a GM, if he goes somewhere else where it will be easier to navigate the new rules. If he stays, it seems that next year is definitely the last year that the big 3 can stay on the roster, unless Klay and Dray take major pay cuts, which sounds doubtful.

And even if Dray opts in for next year, the Dubs already won't be able to re-sign DDV, or any other MLE, correct? So hopefully they can win again this year, and that success will translate into one or more key pieces signing on for the vet min to chase a ring. After next year, it looks like the team will need to be blown up anyway. My guess is they try to get one more year out of the current lineup, rather than blow it up now and start the rebuild next season. But after next year, it looks to me like either Klay or Dray, or both are gone.

The only other option is that the FO pulls off a major trade that moves Klay, Dray, or Poole, and gets back one or more players that fit really well, energize the roster and extend the run. Is that possible? I look at what the Lakers did this year with Westbrook, and the answer is maybe. All it takes is somebody willing on the other side.

[CS707]

You have to wonder how much resistance owners like Lacob really put up. He's been pretty outspoken about how unsustainable the tax has been, this gives sort of an out in terms of mandated cost cutting.

[WarriorGM]

This is going to come back and bite one of the other teams the most. Unforeseen circumstances and all that. The Dubs' run is in its later stages; it may actually help the team to have it forced to move on from Draymond/Klay.

[bicycle]

Second apron lets us run back the same roster next year, or to make cost-cutting trades. Nothing else. Draymond probably opts in. DiVincenzo probably gets better offers around the league than we're allowed to pay him, but we have GP2 again for that slot.

If we trade anyone, it's Poole or Klay. If it's Poole we need a new bench PG unless faith in Ty Jerome and Ryan Rollins has skyrocketed while I wasn't looking. If it's Klay, we have more flexibility in what type of player we get back, but I'm not sure what team would be excited to rent him for a year at $43m and give good players back.

So, I'm feeling pretty sure the team looks substantially the same next year. Whatever strides Poole, Moody, Kuminga make, more minutes for PBJ, Quinones on a two-way. That's it.

[oaktownwarriors87]

Second apron lets us run back the same roster next year, or to make cost-cutting trades. Nothing else. Draymond probably opts in. DiVincenzo probably gets better offers around the league than we're allowed to pay him, but we have GP2 again for that slot.

If we trade anyone, it's Poole or Klay. If it's Poole we need a new bench PG unless faith in Ty Jerome and Ryan Rollins has skyrocketed while I wasn't looking. If it's Klay, we have more flexibility in what type of player we get back, but I'm not sure what team would be excited to rent him for a year at $43m and give good players back.

So, I'm feeling pretty sure the team looks substantially the same next year. Whatever strides Poole, Moody, Kuminga make, more minutes for PBJ, Quinones on a two-way. That's it.

If Donte does come back we should trade him for OPJ

[Twinkie defense]

bunch of commie horse****

Lining the pockets of owners who refuse to spend what it takes to build a good product is not communist. Communist would be lowering ticket, concession and merch prices.

No, they’re penalizing successful teams

The idea behind it is to make the League more competitive - you don't want a big-spending team winning the Championship every season. Which is a hard point to argue given how competitive the West is this year! But some teams probably still want to penalize the Warriors just because they're tired of getting whooped and want some help from the League.

Steph, Klay, Draymond, Looney, Poole... these are all players the Warriors drafted and developed. I think teams should be rewarded for building their teams through the draft - which any team can do - and not punished for it.

[KevinMcreynolds]

Bunch of pinko gobbledygook!

[Twinkie defense]

The ratification announcement doesn't mention anything about these onerous new conditions for luxury-taxed teams?

Here’s what you need to know:

The sides announced on April 1 that they had reached a tentative deal, but it still had to be ratified.
Among the biggest changes under the new CBA, The Athletic previously reported, are that players will be allowed to invest in NBA and WNBA teams, players will no longer be penalized for using marijuana (it has been removed from the drug testing program) and players must play at least 65 games to be eligible for major individual league awards.
Other stipulations include allowing teams to begin negotiating with their free agents one day after the NBA Finals conclude, increasing veteran extension limits from 120 percent to 140 percent and setting the prize money for the new in-season tournament at $500,000 per player.

[GSWFan1994]

The silver lining in all of this is that we could be able to open up major playing time, being an attractive destination for ring chasers and guys who would sign for the minimum to boost up their value and sign a better contract later with another team.

Obviously not an ideal situation, but at least we could improve our mid/end of bench.

When push comes to shove, though, I think they will let Dray & Klay walk, and rebuild with Steph, Looney, Poole, Wiggins, Kuminga and Moody, even GP2 too (though he's already 30 I think).

Maybe get some picks for Klay & Dray, that would accelerate the rebuild. The contender days would be gone quickly.

The most important thing, however, is developing our young talent... we don't have to hit on every single pick/player, but it would help a lot having a bunch of promising, cost-controlled players around, which we could use to dispose of the more expensive pieces, or simply as trade assets.

[wco81]

The restrictions with the second apron starts with free agency and the new season which starts at the start of July.

Bill Simmons was going on about it, says it will hurt several top teams starting next season.

For instance, doesn't think the Bucks can give Brook Lopez what his market value would be, which is around $20 million a year.

No Taxpayer MLE so no more DDV type of signings for the Warriors.


He thinks the players union blew it. Now it's going to be 2 max players per team and the rest of the players fighting for scraps.

So it's going to be tough for teams with several big contracts or two super max contracts to sign the $15-20 million a year players.

Said Warriors are going to have to trade Poole for payroll reasons, not necessarily basketball reasons.

Said his Celtics may have to let Grant Williams walk.

So it's kind of like the opposite of the NFL where teams can have more "middle class" group of players earning good contracts while the NBA will see greater income inequality between the max players and the minimum contract players.

Even teams that did it the "right way" like OKC may have drafted 3 or 4 max players, especially if Holmgren pans out. But along with SGA, can they keep Giddey, Jalen Williams, Holmgren in 2-3 seasons?

4 big player contracts could get teams to the cap, which is around $135 million. Then they have to pay the other 10-11 players with less than $35 million if teams want to avoid the second apron at $169-170 million.

Said it's really surprising that they're implementing it right away, instead of over a couple of years.

[Onus]

The restrictions with the second apron starts with free agency and the new season which starts at the start of July.

Bill Simmons was going on about it, says it will hurt several top teams starting next season.

For instance, doesn't think the Bucks can give Brook Lopez what his market value would be, which is around $20 million a year.

No Taxpayer MLE so no more DDV type of signings for the Warriors.


He thinks the players union blew it. Now it's going to be 2 max players per team and the rest of the players fighting for scraps.

So it's going to be tough for teams with several big contracts or two super max contracts to sign the $15-20 million a year players.

Said Warriors are going to have to trade Poole for payroll reasons, not necessarily basketball reasons.

Said his Celtics may have to let Grant Williams walk.

So it's kind of like the opposite of the NFL where teams can have more "middle class" group of players earning good contracts while the NBA will see greater income inequality between the max players and the minimum contract players.

Even teams that did it the "right way" like OKC may have drafted 3 or 4 max players, especially if Holmgren pans out. But along with SGA, can they keep Giddey, Jalen Williams, Holmgren in 2-3 seasons?

4 big player contracts could get teams to the cap, which is around $135 million. Then they have to pay the other 10-11 players with less than $35 million if teams want to avoid the second apron at $169-170 million.

Said it's really surprising that they're implementing it right away, instead of over a couple of years.

Having cp3 as a superstar as the head of the nbapa was horrible. The superstars are going to make out like bandits while the middle class is going to disappear. Kind of just like our economy

Super maxes are going to really kill teams especially if you have 2. The Celtics are going to be in real trouble if they super max jb and Tatum.

[wco81]

Celtics have a two year window. They have a a couple of players in their playoffs rotation who are making high teens, low twenties contracts an they will be free agents after next season.

If they re-sign all of them, they will pay a lot of taxes and be over the second apron.

Those players are around 30 so will be on the downslope of their careers.

They may still be good. If the Celtics win this year or next, maybe their owners will pay repeater luxury taxes like the Warriors but they will lose some of their depth.

[SinceGatlingWasARookie]

We salary dumped Wiseman. How much more do the small market owners want to hurt us?

[GSWFan1994]

I have 3 takeaways from this new CBA:

- Unless you have a certified All-NBA 1st team-kind of player, it will be extremely hard to build a contender around a supermax player. If you have 2 then... impossible.

- The middle class will get shattered. Lots of guys in this range (let's say, players who are currently top 60-180) will be underpaid. The good thing is, it lowers the probability of giving mind-blowing contracts to these guys, who will later underperform relative to expectations... though we still will have the same crazy GMs who pay 30 mi/year to a guy who will be your 4th best player and unplayable when you need to close games.

- Directly related to the previous bullet: a market opportunity will arise due to that. Dozens of players will be steals in the free agency/trade market, if you have a front office who can identify guys who can outperform their contract and/or fit with your system and can be easily gettable.

[HiRez]

Hell, might as well make the league like fantasy where all the players go into a pool at the beginning of the year (or every X years) and you re-draft everyone. Standard salaries set by draft position.

[wco81]

I think Warriors winning the title last year was fresh on the minds of the people who drafted these specific terms.

They didn't want a top-heavy roster be able to add some role players with the MLE and still keep winning.

Especially when a lot of these teams looked like they weren't willing to spend like the Warriors. There were all these stories about them paying hundreds of millions in luxury taxes so why wasn't their team doing whatever it takes to win, even with these older stars.

Simmons also said that some owners probably wanted to be protected from themselves, giving out overpriced contracts to some role players.

But the players union probably screwed over the large percentage of players who are never going to be all-NBA or be able to get max contracts. So a lot of them would have been okay earning $10-25 million a year.

Now teams are going to be a lot more reluctant to pay these because the penalties accelerate the higher your payroll goes.

[Jerry Maine]

This is a hard cap by stealth.

The players should never have agreed to it

[floppymoose]

It doesn't hurt the players financially... no matter what kind of caps and aprons there are, the players get ~50% of the pie. What hurt the players was giving up 7.5% of the pie back in 2011. That is costing the player $300 million a season.

[Jerry Maine]

It doesn't hurt the players financially... no matter what kind of caps and aprons there are, the players get ~50% of the pie. What hurt the players was giving up 7.5% of the pie back in 2011. That is costing the player $300 million a season.

A hard cap, defacto or otherwise, is going to become a long term win for the owners, a hard cap became a step closer, and more palatable next round. Where the owners are united the players are divided into the max guys, near max, MLE level, vet min, d-league, all with competing interests in how that pie gets divided.

Divide and conquer, and nothing unique about it to the NBA, this is a tenant of global corporatism. They're playing chess while the players checkers.

However I fully agree about 2011, given the increase in franchise valuations it was clearly unnecessary and they'll never claw it back.

[osx28]

You have to wonder how much resistance owners like Lacob really put up. He's been pretty outspoken about how unsustainable the tax has been, this gives sort of an out in terms of mandated cost cutting.

This is what I've been saying for a while. This is a "save us from ourselves" type CBA for owners. It gives them an excuse to not pay players other than the absolute stars . It's the reason player unions of the past were so against hard caps. This fool McCullum just agreed to essentially a hard cap that will destroy pay for the middle class of players, force stars to take less money if they want to stay together and give an excuse for owners to ask players for paycuts. CJ f'd up hard, sure the dubs and clips will feel it immediately, but small market teams will feel it very soon as well. OKC for example, won't be able to retain it's homegrown players once they all ask for a max. Same thing with cleveland, Denver's will be up in a few years when Murray opts out. It's just going to destroy teams' ability to retain more than 2 good players. Rosters will be filled by 2 stars and 13 minimum players. No more money for the Tyler Herros or Jordan Pooles of the world, but also not for the Delon Wrights, Brook Lopez and DDVs of the world. It's going to be either max or minimum players unless max players renounce some of their duly deserved riches.

Kawakami likes to s**t on the idea of Curry taking less money his next deal and I agree he really shouldn't have to, he deserves 4x what he gets, but if he wants to get another chip he's going to have to take less money. Same with Klay and Draymond, no way around it. It's unfair to the players and benefits all owners even the Lacobs and the Ballmers since they can now blame something else if they decide to cheap out.