Klomp wrote:younggunsmn wrote:There is only going to be like one team with any serious cap room (Brooklyn).
Horrible year for anyone looking for a deal above the MLE.
Sign and trades still exist.
Everyone forgets the third part of a free agency "bidding war." It's not just about Team A vs Team B. At the end of the day, the PLAYER still has to accept the contract too. Most of them at that level aren't stupid enough to just say "woe is me I guess I have to just accept a 66% pay cut because only one team has cap space." Forget about it! They will find the money!
If you are a free agent who feels you are above average (IE more than the MLE), do you feel better entering a market where there are two teams available to give that to you (IE 2025) or 10+ teams (say 2026)?
It's basic supply and demand. Salary Cap restrictions are artificial limits placed on demand. There is only so much demand for services to divide up.
You can fudge it to make it slightly bigger but even that can only go so far.
You will have ONE team available next summer to facilitate "Finding the Money", a team which is in a market where they can just hoard cap space for a couple years waiting for the opportunity to outright sign multiple players much better than Julius Randle.
They aren't going to want to eat bad contracts the way OKC and Detroit have.
In fact they may actually try to get off a couple of decent/at worst neutral contracts (Cam Johnson and Nic Claxton)
You will have a situation where all teams have to offer in a bidding war are:
1. the MLE
2. their own contracts or the aggregation thereof
When you have to add value to sign a player by trading away other assets or paying teams to take your liabilities you are adding to the cost of acquiring the free agent. Maybe that doesnt matter for max contract players who are already theoretically being undervalued.
It certainly matters for everyone else.
And the CBA restrictions get tighter and tighter the more salary you add.
You want to try to aggregate 16 million for Klay Thompson and dump a contract into capspace?
The league had room last year to do one of those moves.
You want to aggregate for a 30 mil + or max contract player? Not happening.
What are we hoping to get in a sign and trade for Julius Randle?
Anything we would be willing to take back salary-wise would almost certainly be more valuable to the team we are trading him to.
He'd overpaid at 31 million.
The collapse of the cable tv regional sports model is going to affect things too, especially the spending habits of small to mid market teams..
Silver has said more than once they aren't even going to try to tackle expansion until they can sort that out.
It's going to be a very boring summer when it comes to free agency.
We will have 2 of the most attractive unrestricted free agents though.
I think we underestimate a little bit how many other teams around the league really like Naz Reid.
