RealGM

Two questions...

In the summer of '16, there was the unique situation, that basically all teams had capspace and despite the teams beeing multi million $ businesses they blew their money like a bunch of junkys sitting at their drugdealer, only that he gave all the blow to the dubs and the rest of the teams are now in a biding war about the ciggaretes the dealer has laying around.
How was this possible and does anybody know about awareness of the teams that this happened (like stock market bubbles)?

Which leads to my second question will they do it again, will they again blow all their money as soon as they got it available?
I came to this question, because of all the 1 year deals, that got signed. Which in my illustration would be the dealer stocking up his pile of ciggaretes. Players synchronize with the availability of money and the market will be heated again, are we running a 3-4 year cycle with noticable variation of the contracts handed out or will teams have learned?

I was shocked that teams spent as stupidly as they did. Though I guess it's driven by a lack of job security leading to short-term thinking. GM's think they need a guy, and with all the cap space available around the league they end up offering way too much in order to avoid being left out. Of course that's what makes the center contracts given that summer seem extra bad, as that was the position that there was plenty of depth at - so no reason to make panic offers to backup centers.

Going forward, there will likely be some 'waves' where in some years there's little cap space and a very tight FA market for players while in others they'll be more cap space and a more player-friendly FA market. It won't be nearly as extreme as the 2016 market unless there's another big cap jump. While a lot of players got big 4 year deals there's enough other length contracts to smooth out the amount of cap space around the league. For instance, there looks to be a bunch of cap space next summer - but there's also a ton of FA's to spread the money around to so there won't be the uniformly high deals of 2019. It will be more 'normal' with some guys getting way too much and others signing for very team friendly deals.

The reality is this: When NBA teams have money to spend, they generally spend it. Every once and a while you have a team that sits on a bunch of cap space, but they are very much the exception vs the rule.

I'd except a bunch of questionable contracts again this summer. It's how it has always worked and nothing will make me believe differently until there is reason to do so.