This CBA sucks

[Ryoga Hibiki]

I get that the league wanted to avoid another KD-Warriors superteam from being assembled, but after seeing it in action, I'm convinced that the introduction of the second apron was a total disaster. It does the one thing you don't want it do: it penalizes success, potentially discouraging long-term team building and affecting the league's competitive balance.

It makes it close to impossible for teams to create dynasties. Which is the ultimate goal. The one-off championship doesn't excite anyone. People want to see dominant champions. To have dominant champions, you need to be able to keep your core and rotational players.

I think you are reading it wrong.
What the League wanted was to avoid that having the most money to spend on players being one of the, if not the most, important competitive advantages.
You level the playing field, everybody has a somewhat similar budget. Now it's about how efficient you are in using it.
If you can build a super team out of it, great! But then you must be creative to keep it together, because winning players tend to command more money on the open market. Paying them all was the lazy solution only rich franchises (or owners) could afford. Now everyone must have a plan to replace the guys who fall out of his budget.

As I see the Denver logo: the issue the Nuggets have is that they are extremely top heavy in salaries, but their #2 and #3 do not perform nearly at the level their salary would require. That would be an absolutely unsolvable problem, if the #1 wasn't crazily underpaid for his value. You can afford three real max guys, you can't afford the fake ones. Everything comes from there, and that's a totally self inflicted issue. No point blaming the 2nd Apron, those would have been bad contracts in any CBA. And I am happy that nobody is allowed anymore to just pay up to cover up previous team building mistakes.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

People keep going on about parity but the reality is the NBA people have loved for decades isn’t about that.

I do agree there should be some mechanisms to encourage some parity but going down a path of wanting contending teams to be constantly forced to get rid of highly paid players is ridiculous.

How can people grow emotional attachment to players/cores and rivalries build if we’re seeing a team go deep into the playoffs and just a few years later the CBA dictates they ship off core pieces?

It’s cheapening the product having a revolving door of players being traded, moving via free agency etc.

Take Boston and NY for example. Let’s imagine Tatum was healthy. That’s maybe a great rivalry in prior years that could last a number of years. Instead one basically has to completely blow apart their team because of the CBA.

Same goes for the Nuggets. We should have been watching a generational period from Jokic in the playoffs. Instead the CBA dictates that the Nuggets ownership can’t feasibly do ****.

I think there's a weird narrative on why there have been no repeats for so long:
2019 TOR --> Kawhi leaves
2020 LAL --> injured Lebron
2021 Bucks --> injured Giannis
2022 Warriors --> not good enough
2023 Nuggets --> injured Murray (and Porter not performing)
2024 Boston --> injured Tatum, Porzingis and Holiday

Players are much more exposed to have nagging injuries in the postseason, compared to the past, and there's way less margin for error because there are other good teams ready to capitalize a healthy run.
Injuries are killing the dynasties much more than the CBA.

[Wingy]

People keep going on about parity but the reality is the NBA people have loved for decades isn’t about that.

I do agree there should be some mechanisms to encourage some parity but going down a path of wanting contending teams to be constantly forced to get rid of highly paid players is ridiculous.

How can people grow emotional attachment to players/cores and rivalries build if we’re seeing a team go deep into the playoffs and just a few years later the CBA dictates they ship off core pieces?

It’s cheapening the product having a revolving door of players being traded, moving via free agency etc.

Take Boston and NY for example. Let’s imagine Tatum was healthy. That’s maybe a great rivalry in prior years that could last a number of years. Instead one basically has to completely blow apart their team because of the CBA.

Same goes for the Nuggets. We should have been watching a generational period from Jokic in the playoffs. Instead the CBA dictates that the Nuggets ownership can’t feasibly do ****.

I think there's a weird narrative on why there have been no repeats for so long:
2020 LAL --> injured Lebron
2021 Bucks --> injured Giannis
2022 Warriors --> not good enough
2023 Nuggets --> injured Murray (and Porter not performing)
2024 Boston --> injured Tatum, Porzingis and Holiday

Players are much more exposed to have nagging injuries in the postseason, compared to the past, and there's way less margin for error because there are other good teams ready to capitalize a healthy run.
Injuries are killing the dynasties much more than the CBA.

You could add “injured Klay” to the Warriors. Maybe we never see “2020 LA” if Klay didn’t become a declining shell of himself after the two massive injuries.

I’m ok with the idea of limiting the formation of super teams, but don’t like the implementation like many. Some tweaks-

1. Supermax - this has always been an obvious hamstring when it was supposed to be an advantage. I’ve offered the simple solution for years. The extra ‘super’ part is paid by ownership still, but it doesn’t count against the cap or tax burdens. It does count if the player needs to be traded on the receiving teams cap.

This is now an actual advantage for the ‘home’ team and the players lose nothing.

2. Acquiring top salary guys - this would need some more precision on the numbers and thought for edge cases, but make a rule where you can’t acquire more than one player making say 80% or more of the max within consecutive years.

Largely prevents the Lebron-style team ups in Miami and Cleveland, but doesn’t impact homegrown teams that drafted guys like GSW, Denver, Boston, OKC. You wanna team up? Fine, but take a real pay cut then.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

People keep going on about parity but the reality is the NBA people have loved for decades isn’t about that.

I do agree there should be some mechanisms to encourage some parity but going down a path of wanting contending teams to be constantly forced to get rid of highly paid players is ridiculous.

How can people grow emotional attachment to players/cores and rivalries build if we’re seeing a team go deep into the playoffs and just a few years later the CBA dictates they ship off core pieces?

It’s cheapening the product having a revolving door of players being traded, moving via free agency etc.

Take Boston and NY for example. Let’s imagine Tatum was healthy. That’s maybe a great rivalry in prior years that could last a number of years. Instead one basically has to completely blow apart their team because of the CBA.

Same goes for the Nuggets. We should have been watching a generational period from Jokic in the playoffs. Instead the CBA dictates that the Nuggets ownership can’t feasibly do ****.

I think there's a weird narrative on why there have been no repeats for so long:
2020 LAL --> injured Lebron
2021 Bucks --> injured Giannis
2022 Warriors --> not good enough
2023 Nuggets --> injured Murray (and Porter not performing)
2024 Boston --> injured Tatum, Porzingis and Holiday

Players are much more exposed to have nagging injuries in the postseason, compared to the past, and there's way less margin for error because there are other good teams ready to capitalize a healthy run.
Injuries are killing the dynasties much more than the CBA.

You could add “injured Klay” to the Warriors. Maybe we never see “2020 LA” if Klay didn’t become a declining shell of himself after the two massive injuries.

I’m ok with the idea of limiting the formation of super teams, but don’t like the implementation like many. Some tweaks-

1. Supermax - this has always been an obvious hamstring when it was supposed to be an advantage. I’ve offered the simple solution for years. The extra ‘super’ part is paid by ownership still, but it doesn’t count against the cap or tax burdens. It does count if the player needs to be traded on the receiving teams cap.

This is now an actual advantage for the ‘home’ team and the players lose nothing.

2. Acquiring top salary guys - this would need some more precision on the numbers and thought for edge cases, but make a rule where you can’t acquire more than one player making say 80% or more of the max within consecutive years.

Largely prevents the Lebron-style team ups in Miami and Cleveland, but doesn’t impact homegrown teams that drafted guys like GSW, Denver, Boston, OKC. You wanna team up? Fine, but take a real pay cut then.

I really don't see the need for all that. You have a budget? Stay within it.
You have players who will become to expensive? Trade them and look for someone cheaper.
Moreover, on the supermax. The issue is not that those guys are too expensive, necessarily. It's that the real MVP level guys are too cheap because their salary is capped. This is a problem that comes wherever you put the max; having Jokic instead of Booker is an enormous competitive advantage.

[GrandTheftRondo]

People keep going on about parity but the reality is the NBA people have loved for decades isn’t about that.

I do agree there should be some mechanisms to encourage some parity but going down a path of wanting contending teams to be constantly forced to get rid of highly paid players is ridiculous.

How can people grow emotional attachment to players/cores and rivalries build if we’re seeing a team go deep into the playoffs and just a few years later the CBA dictates they ship off core pieces?

It’s cheapening the product having a revolving door of players being traded, moving via free agency etc.

Take Boston and NY for example. Let’s imagine Tatum was healthy. That’s maybe a great rivalry in prior years that could last a number of years. Instead one basically has to completely blow apart their team because of the CBA.

Same goes for the Nuggets. We should have been watching a generational period from Jokic in the playoffs. Instead the CBA dictates that the Nuggets ownership can’t feasibly do ****.

I think there's a weird narrative on why there have been no repeats for so long:
2019 TOR --> Kawhi leaves
2020 LAL --> injured Lebron
2021 Bucks --> injured Giannis
2022 Warriors --> not good enough
2023 Nuggets --> injured Murray (and Porter not performing)
2024 Boston --> injured Tatum, Porzingis and Holiday

Players are much more exposed to have nagging injuries in the postseason, compared to the past, and there's way less margin for error because there are other good teams ready to capitalize a healthy run.
Injuries are killing the dynasties much more than the CBA.

I was talking more about going forward.

Agree that over the last few years it’s more just been unfortunate luck for teams trying to repeat.

However the new CBA is beginning to take effect and we are seeing contending teams having to sell off players.

Even a team like OKC will be forced into tough decision situations.

I just don’t understand why elite drafting should end up with teams still having to break up so suddenly.

It’s BS.

To bring it back to my team Boston. People say oh well we don’t want teams buying their ways to titles.

Reality is though Boston drafted Brown, Tatum, Smart, Williams, Pritchard, Nesmith etc to build an initial contender.

They accumulated assets and turned them into better assets.

They’re essentially been punished like they’ve got full Phoenix and just threw money at everything.

They drafted Brown and because of the stupid supermax crap essentially had no choice but to overpay for him.

[GrandTheftRondo]

For me personally, I feel the new CBA is just furthering what has been the worst impact of the "player empowerment" era. I just don't FEEL IT with any of these matchups anymore. There's no sweat equity in them. There's not the same amount of teams meeting in the playoffs back to back years or three out of 4 years with mostly the same core. The players have been hopping team to team for a while now which was hurting that for me, and now the league basically gave the teams on the other side motivation to tear their teams apart too.

Like I can see why, in a basketball sense, OKC vs. MIN or NYK vs. IND should be fun series. But meh, it's just not compelling for me. And neither was BOS-DAL in the finals last year or BOS-IND/MIN-DAL either. Sure, I was interest because my team was in it, but for quite a while now once the Celtics have been eliminated, I simply don't find the rest of the playoffs compelling enough to really get into. I'll put it on in the background or at least catch highlights and watch a few breakdowns, but I just don't find it super interesting to watch unless I look up while doing other things and see it's close in the 4th quarter.

Exactly.

And in 2-3 years it will probably be a bunch of other random teams with random players contending.

Where are the rivalries?

Continuity in the NBA has always been a major thing in the NBA that makes you tune in.

Would the NBA be nearly as popular if MJ, LeBron, Kobe etc were on half baked teams throughout their career because of the way the CBA was set up?

Because the way I see it there’s going to be a heck of a lot more stars rotting away on middling teams because of this CBA.

[Chuck Everett]

The contenders of yesteryear from the 90s to now, usually only had 3-4 main guys and then the rest of the roster turned over after a few seasons anyway. People like Trevor Ariza still leave for more money after a ring.

This notion that championship teams keep 6-7 guys together for a long period of time comes from where exactly? Just the Warriors when Lacob said screw a luxury tax?

[Ryoga Hibiki]

People keep going on about parity but the reality is the NBA people have loved for decades isn’t about that.

I do agree there should be some mechanisms to encourage some parity but going down a path of wanting contending teams to be constantly forced to get rid of highly paid players is ridiculous.

How can people grow emotional attachment to players/cores and rivalries build if we’re seeing a team go deep into the playoffs and just a few years later the CBA dictates they ship off core pieces?

It’s cheapening the product having a revolving door of players being traded, moving via free agency etc.

Take Boston and NY for example. Let’s imagine Tatum was healthy. That’s maybe a great rivalry in prior years that could last a number of years. Instead one basically has to completely blow apart their team because of the CBA.

Same goes for the Nuggets. We should have been watching a generational period from Jokic in the playoffs. Instead the CBA dictates that the Nuggets ownership can’t feasibly do ****.

I think there's a weird narrative on why there have been no repeats for so long:
2019 TOR --> Kawhi leaves
2020 LAL --> injured Lebron
2021 Bucks --> injured Giannis
2022 Warriors --> not good enough
2023 Nuggets --> injured Murray (and Porter not performing)
2024 Boston --> injured Tatum, Porzingis and Holiday

Players are much more exposed to have nagging injuries in the postseason, compared to the past, and there's way less margin for error because there are other good teams ready to capitalize a healthy run.
Injuries are killing the dynasties much more than the CBA.

I was talking more about going forward.

Agree that over the last few years it’s more just been unfortunate luck for teams trying to repeat.
However the new CBA is beginning to take effect and we are seeing contending teams having to sell off players.
Even a team like OKC will be forced into tough decision situations.
I just don’t understand why elite drafting should end up with teams still having to break up so suddenly.
It’s BS.
To bring it back to my team Boston. People say oh well we don’t want teams buying their ways to titles.
Reality is though Boston drafted Brown, Tatum, Smart, Williams, Pritchard, Nesmith etc to build an initial contender.
They accumulated assets and turned them into better assets.
They’re essentially been punished like they’ve got full Phoenix and just threw money at everything.
They drafted Brown and because of the stupid supermax crap essentially had no choice but to overpay for him.

Of course you need to make tough decisions, that's the purpose.
You know that those players at some point might become too expensive and you must plan for it.
That's what Presti has been doing, ignoring the BS of taking a "big swing" to make a "win now move".
He knows SGA will be a supermax guy. Chet and JDub will make the rookie max, maybe even the rookie supermax. Complementary players like JWill or Wallace will cost much more. He will use those picks to draft other guys or to trade for other veterans.
And, to be honest, he would have had to do it anyway because he would have never had the budget keep everyone anyway, being in such a small market.
But even Boston, they have young players and picks, good contracts, what's the issue? You want to keep exactly the same team together for many years? This is not happening and never happened.
You still have the budget to keep the core together, but you must know how cycle the rest of the team, for prolonged success.
Again, look at the past: how many guys were both in the 1st and 2nd Bulls 3peat? Two.
What player besides the Spurs big three (who made sacrifices to stay together) was there in both 03 and 07? Bowen, everybody else came and went.

Keep in mind that not everyone can afford to go full Balmer. Or even Lacob. This system is in place to let the Indiana and the OKC contend. And it's working.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

The contenders of yesteryear from the 90s to now, usually only had 3-4 main guys and then the rest of the roster turned over after a few seasons anyway. People like Trevor Ariza still leave for more money after a ring.

This notion that championship teams keep 6-7 guys together for a long period of time comes from where exactly? Just the Warriors when Lacob said screw a luxury tax?

Moreover, Lacob had to do it because he had the two timeline plan in place.
He decided to pay Poole while having Klay on that contract. He wasted a fortune on Oubre for 1 year.
he could have saved some money, if he wanted to.

[Wingy]

I really don't see the need for all that. You have a budget? Stay within it.
You have players who will become to expensive? Trade them and look for someone cheaper.
Moreover, on the supermax. The issue is not that those guys are too expensive, necessarily. It's that the real MVP level guys are too cheap because their salary is capped. This is a problem that comes wherever you put the max; having Jokic instead of Booker is an enormous competitive advantage.

Need for all what? It’s one pretty simple rule.

I’d be down for no max contracts within the budget, but I don’t ever realistically see it happening since it kills the NBA middle class which is a ton more players than the uber elite ones like Joker. What we have in reality is the super max semi-arbitrarily set on all nba, DPOY, etc. and the salaries do end up being crippling with these apron rules.

You can’t make moves to stay within your budget because the rules have everyone else scared to death about their own budget.

Under these rules being actually proficient at building a team gets punished. Being good at drafting and identifying good players and putting a great product on the floor for the fans ends up being a negative.

I’ll never back off from the desire to see homegrown talent, and smart moves kept intact.

Trying to constantly buoy the incompetent teams waters down the NBA for everyone. I don’t care about perfect parity. I care that every franchise has a chance if their ownership actually gives a damn and puts smart people at the helm and lets them run the ship. If you’re half ass, and run your team with buffoons and can’t win…then gtfo and sell your team to someone that can do a good job.

[JRoy]

I think there's a weird narrative on why there have been no repeats for so long:
2019 TOR --> Kawhi leaves
2020 LAL --> injured Lebron
2021 Bucks --> injured Giannis
2022 Warriors --> not good enough
2023 Nuggets --> injured Murray (and Porter not performing)
2024 Boston --> injured Tatum, Porzingis and Holiday

Players are much more exposed to have nagging injuries in the postseason, compared to the past, and there's way less margin for error because there are other good teams ready to capitalize a healthy run.
Injuries are killing the dynasties much more than the CBA.

I was talking more about going forward.

Agree that over the last few years it’s more just been unfortunate luck for teams trying to repeat.
However the new CBA is beginning to take effect and we are seeing contending teams having to sell off players.
Even a team like OKC will be forced into tough decision situations.
I just don’t understand why elite drafting should end up with teams still having to break up so suddenly.
It’s BS.
To bring it back to my team Boston. People say oh well we don’t want teams buying their ways to titles.
Reality is though Boston drafted Brown, Tatum, Smart, Williams, Pritchard, Nesmith etc to build an initial contender.
They accumulated assets and turned them into better assets.
They’re essentially been punished like they’ve got full Phoenix and just threw money at everything.
They drafted Brown and because of the stupid supermax crap essentially had no choice but to overpay for him.

Of course you need to make tough decisions, that's the purpose.
You know that those players at some point might become too expensive and you must plan for it.
That's what Presti has been doing, ignoring the BS of taking a "big swing" to make a "win now move".
He knows SGA will be a supermax guy. Chet and JDub will make the rookie max, maybe even the rookie supermax. Complementary players like JWill or Wallace will cost much more. He will use those picks to draft other guys or to trade for other veterans.
And, to be honest, he would have had to do it anyway because he would have never had the budget keep everyone anyway, being in such a small market.
But even Boston, they have young players and picks, good contracts, what's the issue? You want to keep exactly the same team together for many years? This is not happening and never happened.
You still have the budget to keep the core together, but you must know how cycle the rest of the team, for prolonged success.
Again, look at the past: how many guys were both in the 1st and 2nd Bulls 3peat? Two.
What player besides the Spurs big three (who made sacrifices to stay together) was there in both 03 and 07? Bowen, everybody else came and went.

Keep in mind that not everyone can afford to go full Balmer. Or even Lacob. This system is in place to let the Indiana and the OKC contend. And it's working.

BOS has good contracts?

[Wingy]

I was talking more about going forward.

Agree that over the last few years it’s more just been unfortunate luck for teams trying to repeat.
However the new CBA is beginning to take effect and we are seeing contending teams having to sell off players.
Even a team like OKC will be forced into tough decision situations.
I just don’t understand why elite drafting should end up with teams still having to break up so suddenly.
It’s BS.
To bring it back to my team Boston. People say oh well we don’t want teams buying their ways to titles.
Reality is though Boston drafted Brown, Tatum, Smart, Williams, Pritchard, Nesmith etc to build an initial contender.
They accumulated assets and turned them into better assets.
They’re essentially been punished like they’ve got full Phoenix and just threw money at everything.
They drafted Brown and because of the stupid supermax crap essentially had no choice but to overpay for him.

Of course you need to make tough decisions, that's the purpose.
You know that those players at some point might become too expensive and you must plan for it.
That's what Presti has been doing, ignoring the BS of taking a "big swing" to make a "win now move".
He knows SGA will be a supermax guy. Chet and JDub will make the rookie max, maybe even the rookie supermax. Complementary players like JWill or Wallace will cost much more. He will use those picks to draft other guys or to trade for other veterans.
And, to be honest, he would have had to do it anyway because he would have never had the budget keep everyone anyway, being in such a small market.
But even Boston, they have young players and picks, good contracts, what's the issue? You want to keep exactly the same team together for many years? This is not happening and never happened.
You still have the budget to keep the core together, but you must know how cycle the rest of the team, for prolonged success.
Again, look at the past: how many guys were both in the 1st and 2nd Bulls 3peat? Two.
What player besides the Spurs big three (who made sacrifices to stay together) was there in both 03 and 07? Bowen, everybody else came and went.

Keep in mind that not everyone can afford to go full Balmer. Or even Lacob. This system is in place to let the Indiana and the OKC contend. And it's working.

BOS has good contracts?

Jrue was the bad move, but Brown ends up due to super max rules not being a ‘good contract.’

So I’m sure this dude will say sign him to less, or trade him.

Sign him to less is never going to fly, not as long as we’re still using humans in these games. I made all NBA, and you still won’t take care of me under the prescribed rules? What are the optics as an outside great player looking at that? Are they seeing Boston as an attractive destination? Yeah, those optics are not great.

Trade? Good luck getting equal value for those types of players while not taking on salary that hurts you just as bad or worse. Especially when everyone knows you have limited leverage up against the apron. It’s threading a needle in a haystack.

[JRoy]

Of course you need to make tough decisions, that's the purpose.
You know that those players at some point might become too expensive and you must plan for it.
That's what Presti has been doing, ignoring the BS of taking a "big swing" to make a "win now move".
He knows SGA will be a supermax guy. Chet and JDub will make the rookie max, maybe even the rookie supermax. Complementary players like JWill or Wallace will cost much more. He will use those picks to draft other guys or to trade for other veterans.
And, to be honest, he would have had to do it anyway because he would have never had the budget keep everyone anyway, being in such a small market.
But even Boston, they have young players and picks, good contracts, what's the issue? You want to keep exactly the same team together for many years? This is not happening and never happened.
You still have the budget to keep the core together, but you must know how cycle the rest of the team, for prolonged success.
Again, look at the past: how many guys were both in the 1st and 2nd Bulls 3peat? Two.
What player besides the Spurs big three (who made sacrifices to stay together) was there in both 03 and 07? Bowen, everybody else came and went.

Keep in mind that not everyone can afford to go full Balmer. Or even Lacob. This system is in place to let the Indiana and the OKC contend. And it's working.

BOS has good contracts?

Jrue was the bad move, but Brown ends up due to super max rules not being a ‘good contract.’

So I’m sure this dude will say sign him to less, or trade him.

Sign him to less is never going to fly, not as long as we’re still using humans in these games. I made all NBA, and you still won’t take care of me under the prescribed rules? What are the optics as an outside great player looking at that? Are they seeing Boston as an attractive destination? Yeah, those optics are not great.

Trade? Good luck getting equal value for those types of players while not taking on salary that hurts you just as bad or worse. Especially when everyone knows you have limited leverage up against the apron. It’s threading a needle in a haystack.

All true.

BOS did what BOS needed to do to win a title and knew they would have to seriously address salary afterward.

The CBA is acting as intended.

[Yank3525]

I look forward to the NBA having a hard cap. Like the NFL. The NFL doesn't have "destination cities". Half the league is not farm teams for others.

I'll admit that if this ever happens, I could be wrong, and not like the outcome.

The NFL hard cap is such a fallacy, take the New Orleans Saints as an example. The cap is easily circumvented, constantly.

Yeah, the Saints have been in "cap" hell since the first Obama administration.

[Ryoga Hibiki]

I really don't see the need for all that. You have a budget? Stay within it.
You have players who will become to expensive? Trade them and look for someone cheaper.
Moreover, on the supermax. The issue is not that those guys are too expensive, necessarily. It's that the real MVP level guys are too cheap because their salary is capped. This is a problem that comes wherever you put the max; having Jokic instead of Booker is an enormous competitive advantage.

Need for all what? It’s one pretty simple rule.

I’d be down for no max contracts within the budget, but I don’t ever realistically see it happening since it kills the NBA middle class which is a ton more players than the uber elite ones like Joker. What we have in reality is the super max semi-arbitrarily set on all nba, DPOY, etc. and the salaries do end up being crippling with these apron rules.

You can’t make moves to stay within your budget because the rules have everyone else scared to death about their own budget.

Under these rules being actually proficient at building a team gets punished. Being good at drafting and identifying good players and putting a great product on the floor for the fans ends up being a negative.

I’ll never back off from the desire to see homegrown talent, and smart moves kept intact.

Trying to constantly buoy the incompetent teams waters down the NBA for everyone. I don’t care about perfect parity. I care that every franchise has a chance if their ownership actually gives a damn and puts smart people at the helm and lets them run the ship. If you’re half ass, and run your team with buffoons and can’t win…then gtfo and sell your team to someone that can do a good job.

This CBA is not helping incompetent teams, it's helping teams that can't afford to go deep into the tax, levelling the playing field.
Moreover, I am all for letting homegrown talent stay in the team as long as possible. But that doesn't mean that you should be able to keep *everybody* at *whatever* price. The Celtics have two all nba level guys they drafted, the current rules allow them to keep them as long they wish.
What they can't do is paying both of them the Supermax while also having the guys they traded for, White, Jrue and Porzingis, at 30+ per year.
And all these guys (maybe not KP, given his health status) have positive trade value. Stevens can easily pivot if necessary.

Moreover, what is this BS (from BS) that team are penalized for "drafting well"? If you draft well you can have assets to trade to retool, that's an enormous positive. What you can't do is paying everybody as if there was no budget.

[RRyder823]

People keep going on about parity but the reality is the NBA people have loved for decades isn’t about that.

I do agree there should be some mechanisms to encourage some parity but going down a path of wanting contending teams to be constantly forced to get rid of highly paid players is ridiculous.

How can people grow emotional attachment to players/cores and rivalries build if we’re seeing a team go deep into the playoffs and just a few years later the CBA dictates they ship off core pieces?

It’s cheapening the product having a revolving door of players being traded, moving via free agency etc.

Take Boston and NY for example. Let’s imagine Tatum was healthy. That’s maybe a great rivalry in prior years that could last a number of years. Instead one basically has to completely blow apart their team because of the CBA.

Same goes for the Nuggets. We should have been watching a generational period from Jokic in the playoffs. Instead the CBA dictates that the Nuggets ownership can’t feasibly do ****.

People can grow emotional connections to teams. NFL doesn't have a issue with fans emotional investment. Useing it as an excuse for the NBA because they choose to promote the individual over the franchise is missing the forest for the trees

As an aside the promoting of players over the franchises is limiting to to leagues long term popularity growth (even if it was the reason for the league getting to its current point)


Sent from my SM-S918U using RealGM mobile app

[Ryoga Hibiki]

I was talking more about going forward.

Agree that over the last few years it’s more just been unfortunate luck for teams trying to repeat.
However the new CBA is beginning to take effect and we are seeing contending teams having to sell off players.
Even a team like OKC will be forced into tough decision situations.
I just don’t understand why elite drafting should end up with teams still having to break up so suddenly.
It’s BS.
To bring it back to my team Boston. People say oh well we don’t want teams buying their ways to titles.
Reality is though Boston drafted Brown, Tatum, Smart, Williams, Pritchard, Nesmith etc to build an initial contender.
They accumulated assets and turned them into better assets.
They’re essentially been punished like they’ve got full Phoenix and just threw money at everything.
They drafted Brown and because of the stupid supermax crap essentially had no choice but to overpay for him.

Of course you need to make tough decisions, that's the purpose.
You know that those players at some point might become too expensive and you must plan for it.
That's what Presti has been doing, ignoring the BS of taking a "big swing" to make a "win now move".
He knows SGA will be a supermax guy. Chet and JDub will make the rookie max, maybe even the rookie supermax. Complementary players like JWill or Wallace will cost much more. He will use those picks to draft other guys or to trade for other veterans.
And, to be honest, he would have had to do it anyway because he would have never had the budget keep everyone anyway, being in such a small market.
But even Boston, they have young players and picks, good contracts, what's the issue? You want to keep exactly the same team together for many years? This is not happening and never happened.
You still have the budget to keep the core together, but you must know how cycle the rest of the team, for prolonged success.
Again, look at the past: how many guys were both in the 1st and 2nd Bulls 3peat? Two.
What player besides the Spurs big three (who made sacrifices to stay together) was there in both 03 and 07? Bowen, everybody else came and went.

Keep in mind that not everyone can afford to go full Balmer. Or even Lacob. This system is in place to let the Indiana and the OKC contend. And it's working.

BOS has good contracts?

maybe not KP, because of his health questionmarks, but you can trade JRue for positive value and get quite a lot for White.
They are not Murray and MPj, they aren't stuck at all.

[JRoy]

Of course you need to make tough decisions, that's the purpose.
You know that those players at some point might become too expensive and you must plan for it.
That's what Presti has been doing, ignoring the BS of taking a "big swing" to make a "win now move".
He knows SGA will be a supermax guy. Chet and JDub will make the rookie max, maybe even the rookie supermax. Complementary players like JWill or Wallace will cost much more. He will use those picks to draft other guys or to trade for other veterans.
And, to be honest, he would have had to do it anyway because he would have never had the budget keep everyone anyway, being in such a small market.
But even Boston, they have young players and picks, good contracts, what's the issue? You want to keep exactly the same team together for many years? This is not happening and never happened.
You still have the budget to keep the core together, but you must know how cycle the rest of the team, for prolonged success.
Again, look at the past: how many guys were both in the 1st and 2nd Bulls 3peat? Two.
What player besides the Spurs big three (who made sacrifices to stay together) was there in both 03 and 07? Bowen, everybody else came and went.

Keep in mind that not everyone can afford to go full Balmer. Or even Lacob. This system is in place to let the Indiana and the OKC contend. And it's working.

BOS has good contracts?

maybe not KP, because of his health questionmarks, but you can trade JRue for positive value and get quite a lot for White.
They are not Murray and MPj, they aren't stuck at all.

Not convinced BOS can get positive value for Jrue or KP, and JB is paid a lot for a second banana. Will be interesting to see what BOS does.

[Invictus88]

If you have an overabundance of assets that you can't all pay then you need to flip some for picks or ones that you can afford.

Being able to draft well is a fantastic skill for a GM. So is figuring out how to balance cost vs need of your personnel.

Adapt.

[reddyplayerone]

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.

Why?

My entire adult life has been lived under the backdrop of cries about how the world has gone soft and how everyone gets a participation trophy these days

So I always have to giggle, because the venn diagram of the people who say stuff like that and then turn around and tout parity as the ideal for a pro sport is very probably just a circle

Really comes down to this fantasy people buy into that there's some sort of inherent moral value to being a professional sports team in a "small market," which was always laughable, and is particularly funny in a day and age when every team is owned by a squadron of hedge fund oligarchs