This CBA sucks

[Myth]

My opinion has always been that ownership shouldn't be cap penalized for the full amount so they can still reward the player but don't completely hinder roster flexibility. Maybe they put a .75x lever on them to turn an owner paying a player $50m that season to only having a $37.5m cap hit.... Illustrative numbers, but you get the idea

Why wouldn’t player salaries count in the entirety? Is this only highly paid player? This sounds like a way of going back to stacking the deck if you are talking about only high level players. If it is everybody, the cap would just artificially change to balance out.

[flranger]

It is beyond stupid. It penalizes teams for having great players. Needs to be tweaked immensely. Look at the situation Cleveland ended up in. They signed Mobley to a rookie max that he definitely deserved but the contract now turned into a cap killer because he got the DPOY. DPOY is great achievement but it doesn’t make you a player that can carry a team. They need to fix how max contracts count against the cap and the tax. These contracts should never count more than 30 percent. That way teams won’t second guess themselves extending their best players without making it impossible to build around these players.

Cleveland could have eliminated that risk but chose not to. That contract becoming a super max was avoidable, they just didn't want to upset the player. I'm not sad for them, it was a decision they have to live with.

Ultimately every contract a team has on the books was born from a decision they made.

[Froob]

Yeah I know obviously a celtics fan,

but why is it so hard to cut money even when you're trying to do the "right" thing? They should just make the second apron essentially a hard cap and you can spend up to it how you wish. From what I read, they even made it so you can't trade a guaranteed contract for a non guaranteed contract over the apron, why are they trying to lock you into the apron?

Honestly don't know anyone who enjoy this CBA. It kind of took a lot of fun out of trades and even killed the buy out market which was 99% hype and 1% production (almost always somebody washed up who makes zero impact).

NBA punishing teams that want to field the best team while providing benefits for teams fielding an non-competitive team is going to slowly kill the league.

Just like it killed the NFL and NHL?

Difference in the NFL is there are tons of ways to manipulate the cap, you can't do that in the NBA.

[hugepatsfan]

I don't think the CBA is really hurting the Celtics. It's the Tatum injury. They re-signed everyone and set themselves up to pay a massive tax bill this year because they had a clear and obvious title window. But as much as people talk about their payroll, few realize how well they left themselves positioned for 2026-27 season not just to duck not the 2nd apron but the luxury tax altogether. Their (former, but still managing) owner came out and said how he doesn't think anyone will stay in the 2nd apron for more than 2 years because of the crippling basketball penalties around it but you can do it for those two years financially if the team is worth it on the court. They set themselves to stay over the 2nd apron for 3 years for a team very much worth it on the court, which is an extra year because some of the penalties were delayed that first year.

The "crunch" for the Celtics now is that because of the Tatum injury they probably have some urgency to duck 2nd apron and/or luxury tax now which they didn't really leave themselves feasible avenues to do so for this upcoming season. They never really factored in a season lost to injury for Tatum into their plans so now they either have to bite the bullet and still pay the costs this year or mortgage their future of assets to to get out of the high payroll a year earlier than they set themselves up to do.

[TravisScott55]

blame cheap owners

This doesn't do anything for that. Owners have a set spend as a group...

It has everything to do with it. A lot of the owners didn't want to go over the tax to have a competing team

[life_saver]

I think teams like Nuggets definitely got bit unlucky because some of the key decisions were taken prior to announcement of new CBA...like I am not sure Nuggets would have given MPJ a max contract under new CBA

[AbeVigodaLive]

Isn't this what we wanted? 7 different champions over the last 7 years. The CBA has made super teams next to impossible.
I understand where Celtics' fans are coming from because their main players were drafted by the team but in the grand scheme of things, i would prefer the parity we have now to the KD-warriors or Heatles era.

I don't know.

Personally, I'd like it if teams could stick together a bit longer.

[kodo]

The goal of any cap, hard or soft, is league parity.
And for the first time in NBA history the league will have 7 different champions in 7 years. From a success standpoint, this CBA is a home run.

Now if a fan doesn't want parity and just wants to see one team win all decade like the MJ Bulls, yeah it sucks but even as a Chicagoan most of the league was a bit boring then. It was just Chicago and who got the honor of losing to us back then. The Jordan baseball break helped a lot.

[shi-woo]

This CBA is fantastic. The only problem I have is with these absolutely horrific SuperMax deals which have had the complete opposite effect they were intended for. Having dudes on these contracts in a league with a hard cap is madness, and makes it impossible to have 2 really good all-nba players. I also hate how if a dude makes an award team, he somehow auto gets it essentially even if he's not that caliber of player? Like seriously, making All-DEF and a player now wants to make potentially 3x as much as a guy that's better than him at the game, and will leave if he doesn't get it because he feels "insulted"? Worst decetion the NBA has ever made, and you KNOW the players will never give that money back in future negotiations.

Even looking at the Celtics, if Brown and Tatum weren't on these deals, we would be flirting with the 2nd apron, not doing jumping jacks over it. Same with the Nuggets with Joker, and same with Towns and th Wolves. Nuggets had to let dues walk to pay Jokic that contract, and Wolves let their All-NBA franchise cornerstone leave for a cheaper price. Luka got traded, and Bucks had no wiggle room with Giannis.

These contracts have destroyed every single contender that has had to jack one out.

The CBA is honestly fine. The issue is teams that would go into the apron for depth are not going into the apron for depth, but to vastly overpay their already top paid players.

[itrsteve]

My opinion has always been that ownership shouldn't be cap penalized for the full amount so they can still reward the player but don't completely hinder roster flexibility. Maybe they put a .75x lever on them to turn an owner paying a player $50m that season to only having a $37.5m cap hit.... Illustrative numbers, but you get the idea

Why wouldn’t player salaries count in the entirety? Is this only highly paid player? This sounds like a way of going back to stacking the deck if you are talking about only high level players. If it is everybody, the cap would just artificially change to balance out.

No, I meant the players that meet the eligibility for these crazy contracts which only one team can offer - ideally scale back to designated rookie scale extensions.

The team has to decide between keeping their player happy and future flexibility.

I like seeing stars with the teams which drafted them and tools like the designated rookie max are a great way for that incumbent team to be competitive against the rest of the league - I don't see the need to fully penalize them for using those for their intended purpose as per the CBA.

[Blame Rasho]

Well there will be 7 different champions and the players got what they wanted with their salaries. Fans, players and GM are happy. Just because you aren’t happy because of your team situation, doesn’t mean it’s bad for everyone else.

[SpreeS]

I like new CBA overall, but teams like OKC or GSW or others must be protected if they want to pay own drafted players.

[Moose]

Players will have to get used to the new normal of less bloated salaries in the next few years, but the second apron is a little too rough.

And I never liked how it was so difficult to make trades in the NBA. And now it's even harder.

It's honestly a bit silly.

And considering this is what the owners agreed to, I'm pretty sure most of them didn't actually know the difficulties ahead.

[og15]

So what exactly are you calling the "right thing"?

they want you to cut salary by design but they don’t give you any way to actually do it

Don't over pay for players or give contracts that are too long.

They are getting exactly what they wanted. Look at who's left in the playoffs. This is the NBA's dream.

I think what they might have missed is giving some provisions as the CBA transitioned from the old to the new to allow teams to accomodate

[MNRunLeft]

There are two ways to look at the issues of the CBA, first its punitive but thats what it was designed to be by the owners a way to prevent themselves from continuing to spend grossly over the tax regardless of simply the financial penalties that favored large markets or the wealthiest of owners who simple were ok paying the bill. The rules now not only impact them in the pocket but actually hamstring them from a roster building perspective so for the first time ever the tax has an tangible impact.

The other issue and I think the one that some teams are getting caught by is how quickly it rolled out and some forced teams to actually proactively adjust their strategies on how they planned to build their rosters for the future. Wolves are a prime example having made the Rudy Gobert trade before the new CBA with the intention of building around a Ant, KAT, Rudy core but when the CBA changed that roster was not feasible they made a run with it and ultimately decided they had to trade KAT because it wasn't going to be an option to keep all 3 plus fill out a roster with the depth they felt they needed to complete long term. Might not have been a popular move a the time, might not have been what people considered good trade value at the time but for the Wolves it did create much needed flexibility and that might not have been available again in the future so they made the pivot.

[bisme37]

It's not like teams in the 2nd apron got there by breaking the rules, they made moves according to the CBA. But now if your GM does too good of a job your team gets broken up for non-basketball reasons.

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[dhsilv2]

blame cheap owners

This doesn't do anything for that. Owners have a set spend as a group...

It has everything to do with it. A lot of the owners didn't want to go over the tax to have a competing team

They don't really care about going over in general. The issue is there other penalties. The NBA doesn't want the owners to go over. That was the point of all of this.

[dhsilv2]

It's not like teams in the 2nd apron got there by breaking the rules, they made moves according to the CBA. But now if your GM does too good of a job your team gets broken up for non-basketball reasons.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2448454&hilit=

The basketball reason is they don't want teams repeating...or staying good.

[dhsilv2]

they want you to cut salary by design but they don’t give you any way to actually do it

Don't over pay for players or give contracts that are too long.

They are getting exactly what they wanted. Look at who's left in the playoffs. This is the NBA's dream.

I think what they might have missed is giving some provisions as the CBA transitioned from the old to the new to allow teams to accomodate

That's a very reasonable take, but I think after the KD deal, the owners don't have much sympathy. Of course...many of us are still a bit annoyed with how that killed KG's career as well. But that's kinda how the NBA generally does things.

[DwayneSchintzus]

I feel like its causing more chaos for the teams (and in turn, the league) than the players.

i wish they could adjust it after the season. maybe the cap will go up enough in the next couple of years to make it a little less restrictive.