2025-2026: Around the League

[jezzerinho]

American sports already do a lot to level the playing field. I don't think the buyout situation is that fundamentally unfair when you look at it through the prism of basketball being a pretty egalitarian league by world standards. Maybe the new salary could be netted off the old salary the selling team is eating, that would probably be fairer.

As a counterpoint in another big sports league:
Espanyol is Barcelona's second football/soccer team in La Liga. Historically it's been much smaller than its crosstown rival Barça, but has for the most part survived as a top division team.

Espanyol was, until this offseason, owned by a Chinese businessman. He'll continue to have a stake but I think only to facilitate a second tranche of shares to be sold in the future.

Anyway, this owner's modus operandi has been to operate the club on a shoestring. They have a very decent talent identification department and have an eye for young and emerging footballers.

Every offseason though, Espanyol sells its best 2 or 3 players. Typically, those players go to the big(ger) clubs, many of them to rival teams in the same league. Just this summer, their prize goalkeeper Garcia was traded to archrival Barcelona.

Every offseason the FO effectively hobbles the team for the coming season, ensuring the fans will have little to cheer about, while the owner recoups his initial investment.

Espanyol have been bottom dwellers in La Liga almost constantly and have been relegated to the second (bouncing back up the following season).

If you think buyouts are unfair, I suggest becoming an Espanyol fan, or fan of one of the multitude of selling clubs in Euro football, who survive not be being successful on the pitch but by selling their assets off it.

[Knightro]

There's arguments for both sides of this but I think you're missing the point here. You compared Bradley Beal getting bought out and signing in La to Cole and jock whoever going to Milwaukee and Portland. Add in Ayton. You got 3 players that are proven difference makers going to cap strapped LA teams super cheap and 2 irrelevant guys going to Portland and Milwaukee. Ok the Milwaukee Portland situations are different because of lilliard affecting both teams. The point is that buyouts have not circumvented large market teams from having an unfair advantage.

We got tyus for 7 million and the clippers got Beal for 5.3


You don't see anything wrong with that?

I don’t. Look beyond Beal’s raw stats and you’ll see he hasn’t played winning basketball in close to a decade.

He didn’t like being the number three option in Phoenix, even though he knew they already had Durant and Booker when he waived his no-trade clause to go there in the first place.

I have a suspicion that the Beal experiment could end up be a total disaster for LA. He shot the ball fine for Phoenix, but he also immediately inflected their whole team with a give up malaise and he also doesn’t have a role player mentality which is what he needs to be now at this point in his career.

I think what you said about these guys being “proven difference makers” is where we’re getting lost.

Those guys might have been that at one time, perhaps when they signed their previous contracts. But I wouldn’t say any of them are that at this point.

[Knightro]

I feel like this board is significantly overrating how impactful Beal, Smart and Ayton actually are to winning games in 2026.

[pepe1991]

American sports already do a lot to level the playing field. I don't think the buyout situation is that fundamentally unfair when you look at it through the prism of basketball being a pretty egalitarian league by world standards. Maybe the new salary could be netted off the old salary the selling team is eating, that would probably be fairer.

As a counterpoint in another big sports league:
Espanyol is Barcelona's second football/soccer team in La Liga. Historically it's been much smaller than its crosstown rival Barça, but has for the most part survived as a top division team.

Espanyol was, until this offseason, owned by a Chinese businessman. He'll continue to have a stake but I think only to facilitate a second tranche of shares to be sold in the future.

Anyway, this owner's modus operandi has been to operate the club on a shoestring. They have a very decent talent identification department and have an eye for young and emerging footballers.

Every offseason though, Espanyol sells its best 2 or 3 players. Typically, those players go to the big(ger) clubs, many of them to rival teams in the same league. Just this summer, their prize goalkeeper Garcia was traded to archrival Barcelona.

Every offseason the FO effectively hobbles the team for the coming season, ensuring the fans will have little to cheer about, while the owner recoups his initial investment.

Espanyol have been bottom dwellers in La Liga almost constantly and have been relegated to the second (bouncing back up the following season).

If you think buyouts are unfair, I suggest becoming an Espanyol fan, or fan of one of the multitude of selling clubs in Euro football, who survive not be being successful on the pitch but by selling their assets off it.

La Liga has 3 serious title contenders every year, at most.

Nobody won but Barca, Real, Atletico for 22 years.

Thing with soccer is simple, you have 10-15 best Euro teams that fight for Champions League . Most domestic leagues don't have more than 3-4 serious contenders.

Even lot of domestic powerhouses that often win national titles like PSV, Ajax, Dinamo Zagreb, Club Brugge, Genk, Copenhagen, Ferencvaros, Sporting all live off development and selling.

But again, soccer "parity" is not having 0 Lakers, it's having 15 "Lakers" teams, where money isn't object. Wanna burn 2 billion euros on a team? Go for it. Wanna buy third string mid fielder for €35M that will collect 20 games ? Good for you.

Like, Bayern made habbit of buying best opposing players from Bundesliga just to make them worst. When Dortmund had golden generation, they just casually bought Lewa and Gotze in back to back years


Soccer never pretended that parity is a thing. Salary cap doesn't exist, you just have some loose money in, ,money out rule for financial fairplay that every smart team avoids without any issues.

Soccer also has x400 more talent in terms of quality of players than NBA. NBA itself has talent issue, there is no new Iverson playing in Austria at age of 21. Compared to soccer, where RB Salzburg every few year lunches several players who are world class and future €60M players.

NBA also has massive issue with how to get talents. It's draft. And no other way. You can only avoid draft by going undrafted first when your time comes.

NBA simply needs "fair play" more than soccer because of all of that.

[Knightro]

Bradley Beal was a very good player... 5 years ago.

The last four seasons he's played 196/328 possible games (59.8% of the games) and over that time period his impact metrics tumbled and eventually cratered spectacularly this past year.

Beal played 32 MPG and had a -8.0 NET rating for Phoenix this past year. That's was third worst in the entire NBA of players who played that many minutes. The Suns were absolutely horrendous when he was on the court last season.

On top of that he plagued the entire team with his "I'm gonna mail this game in" level of checked out miserable attitude.

On top of THAT, he was apparently quite unhappy about going from being a 30+ USG% player in Washington to a 22 USG% player in Phoenix, and now he's going to a team where he's going to be a 4th option at best?

I really do get that Bradley Beal was a damn good NBA player in the past. From 2017 to 2021 he was really good! I would say he was comfortably a top 35-40 player at his peak. That's really quite good.

But that was a long time ago and he's been injured and bad, especially the last little bit, since then. Now he's like outside the top 200.

[Knightro]

Marcus Smart is pretty much the same thing as Beal. At one point he was absolutely a good player who was a positive contributor on playoff teams. But it has been four years now since he won Defensive Player of the Year (he didn't deserve it, but whatever).

Since then? He's only played 115/246 games (46.7%) and has seen both his offensive metrics - which were already bad - and defensive metrics slip. And he's the kind of guy like Jonathan Isaac for the Magic where his offense is so poor that he has to be an A++ defensively. If he's just a regular ole above average B+ defensively, that simply won't be good enough.

And he's going to a team in the Lakers where they're going to task him with defending the smallest and quickest players on the other team, a role he definitely does not appear to be suited for as he turns 32 during next season.

The last three years combined Smart has been posted a .539 TS%, -2.0 OBPM, 0.7 DBPM, -1.3 BPM, 0.6 VORP.

That's a taxpayer MLE caliber player if I've ever seen one.

[j-ragg]

Poor Bulls. Couldn’t find a sucker like we did in 2021. Tough break.

Read on Twitter

[jezzerinho]

American sports already do a lot to level the playing field. I don't think the buyout situation is that fundamentally unfair when you look at it through the prism of basketball being a pretty egalitarian league by world standards. Maybe the new salary could be netted off the old salary the selling team is eating, that would probably be fairer.

As a counterpoint in another big sports league:
Espanyol is Barcelona's second football/soccer team in La Liga. Historically it's been much smaller than its crosstown rival Barça, but has for the most part survived as a top division team.

Espanyol was, until this offseason, owned by a Chinese businessman. He'll continue to have a stake but I think only to facilitate a second tranche of shares to be sold in the future.

Anyway, this owner's modus operandi has been to operate the club on a shoestring. They have a very decent talent identification department and have an eye for young and emerging footballers.

Every offseason though, Espanyol sells its best 2 or 3 players. Typically, those players go to the big(ger) clubs, many of them to rival teams in the same league. Just this summer, their prize goalkeeper Garcia was traded to archrival Barcelona.

Every offseason the FO effectively hobbles the team for the coming season, ensuring the fans will have little to cheer about, while the owner recoups his initial investment.

Espanyol have been bottom dwellers in La Liga almost constantly and have been relegated to the second (bouncing back up the following season).

If you think buyouts are unfair, I suggest becoming an Espanyol fan, or fan of one of the multitude of selling clubs in Euro football, who survive not be being successful on the pitch but by selling their assets off it.

La Liga has 3 serious title contenders every year, at most.

Nobody won but Barca, Real, Atletico for 22 years.

Thing with soccer is simple, you have 10-15 best Euro teams that fight for Champions League . Most domestic leagues don't have more than 3-4 serious contenders.

Even lot of domestic powerhouses that often win national titles like PSV, Ajax, Dinamo Zagreb, Club Brugge, Genk, Copenhagen, Ferencvaros, Sporting all live off development and selling.

But again, soccer "parity" is not having 0 Lakers, it's having 15 "Lakers" teams, where money isn't object. Wanna burn 2 billion euros on a team? Go for it. Wanna buy third string mid fielder for €35M that will collect 20 games ? Good for you.

Like, Bayern made habbit of buying best opposing players from Bundesliga just to make them worst. When Dortmund had golden generation, they just casually bought Lewa and Gotze in back to back years


Soccer never pretended that parity is a thing. Salary cap doesn't exist, you just have some loose money in, ,money out rule for financial fairplay that every smart team avoids without any issues.

Soccer also has x400 more talent in terms of quality of players than NBA. NBA itself has talent issue, there is no new Iverson playing in Austria at age of 21. Compared to soccer, where RB Salzburg every few year lunches several players who are world class and future €60M players.

NBA also has massive issue with how to get talents. It's draft. And no other way. You can only avoid draft by going undrafted first when your time comes.

NBA simply needs "fair play" more than soccer because of all of that.

You're kind of making my point for me here. 80% of top tier Euro football clubs have no real hope of success in their own league. They're really just participants in a machine where the top 3 or 4 teams in each league make the money and win the trophies.

NBA, as a ringfenced franchise model, has done a lot to make the league competitive and the number of different winners from small and large markets over the past number of years is all the evidence you need.

Not saying LA doesn't get special treatment. Not saying big markets in the NBA don't have an inherent advantage fro attracting talent. But compared to most other global pro sports models (including Europeam basketball) there is enough parity that a few buyouts make very little different in the overall scheme.

[pepe1991]

American sports already do a lot to level the playing field. I don't think the buyout situation is that fundamentally unfair when you look at it through the prism of basketball being a pretty egalitarian league by world standards. Maybe the new salary could be netted off the old salary the selling team is eating, that would probably be fairer.

As a counterpoint in another big sports league:
Espanyol is Barcelona's second football/soccer team in La Liga. Historically it's been much smaller than its crosstown rival Barça, but has for the most part survived as a top division team.

Espanyol was, until this offseason, owned by a Chinese businessman. He'll continue to have a stake but I think only to facilitate a second tranche of shares to be sold in the future.

Anyway, this owner's modus operandi has been to operate the club on a shoestring. They have a very decent talent identification department and have an eye for young and emerging footballers.

Every offseason though, Espanyol sells its best 2 or 3 players. Typically, those players go to the big(ger) clubs, many of them to rival teams in the same league. Just this summer, their prize goalkeeper Garcia was traded to archrival Barcelona.

Every offseason the FO effectively hobbles the team for the coming season, ensuring the fans will have little to cheer about, while the owner recoups his initial investment.

Espanyol have been bottom dwellers in La Liga almost constantly and have been relegated to the second (bouncing back up the following season).

If you think buyouts are unfair, I suggest becoming an Espanyol fan, or fan of one of the multitude of selling clubs in Euro football, who survive not be being successful on the pitch but by selling their assets off it.

La Liga has 3 serious title contenders every year, at most.

Nobody won but Barca, Real, Atletico for 22 years.

Thing with soccer is simple, you have 10-15 best Euro teams that fight for Champions League . Most domestic leagues don't have more than 3-4 serious contenders.

Even lot of domestic powerhouses that often win national titles like PSV, Ajax, Dinamo Zagreb, Club Brugge, Genk, Copenhagen, Ferencvaros, Sporting all live off development and selling.

But again, soccer "parity" is not having 0 Lakers, it's having 15 "Lakers" teams, where money isn't object. Wanna burn 2 billion euros on a team? Go for it. Wanna buy third string mid fielder for €35M that will collect 20 games ? Good for you.

Like, Bayern made habbit of buying best opposing players from Bundesliga just to make them worst. When Dortmund had golden generation, they just casually bought Lewa and Gotze in back to back years


Soccer never pretended that parity is a thing. Salary cap doesn't exist, you just have some loose money in, ,money out rule for financial fairplay that every smart team avoids without any issues.

Soccer also has x400 more talent in terms of quality of players than NBA. NBA itself has talent issue, there is no new Iverson playing in Austria at age of 21. Compared to soccer, where RB Salzburg every few year lunches several players who are world class and future €60M players.

NBA also has massive issue with how to get talents. It's draft. And no other way. You can only avoid draft by going undrafted first when your time comes.

NBA simply needs "fair play" more than soccer because of all of that.

You're kind of making my point for me here. 80% of top tier Euro football clubs have no real hope of success in their own league.

They're really just participants in a machine where the top 3 or 4 teams in each league make the money and win the trophies.

NBA, as a ringfenced franchise model, has done a lot to make the league competitive and the number of different winners from small and large markets over the past number of years is all the evidence you need.

Not saying LA doesn't get special treatment. Not saying big markets in the NBA don't have an inherent advantage fro attracting talent. But compared to most other global pro sports models (including Europeam basketball) there is enough parity that a few buyouts make very little different in the overall scheme.

From historic POV, NBA isn't much better. 79 titles in nba history, Lakers and Celtics won 35.

New days ,same old, both Celtics and Lakers won title in past 5 years.

Difference in soccer is Champions league that is ultimate crown jewel. National championships don't have playoff system, but due relagations and promotions to Championship League or/ European league gives season edge. Also there are only 40 games in season at most ( national league ).
Soccer also has whole subculture of fan(atic)s. You go to a game to sing songs of your favorite team and yell at a ref what would you do to his sister.

NBA has system that is outdated. 82 games that nobody really enjoys , including fans. Winning 73 games or 38 games at the end of a day doesn't really make any difference but from home court advantage.
You can argue that even 4 wins to advance playoffs are overkill.
NBA teams don't even have fan culture. Just bunch of soccer moms & babies and few basketball fans in between. NBA finds booing GM too edgy.

Tbh i don't think current nba system is even good for product, to me it feels like it's system made to cycle championship around teams, and i don't think by having 10 different winners in 16 years is actually adding much to a product. I can see why it's in place, to keep fans of bad teams engaged, knowing their cycle might be around a corner, but also once you win, you ain't anthing special, everbody wins now.

Why so many people still talk about Jordan Bulls and golden era and GB has like 500000 pages of 90s debates? Because his existence prevented rest of a league from winning anything while he was on top. Nobody got tired of Bulls winning. People got really bored of watching Spurs and PIstons wrestle with ball and his wannabes pretend to be MJ right after he retired.



When you put things in perspective, it's not that hard to figure why nba is dead without China money and why soccer is by far most popular sport in the world.


As for buyouts, as i wrote somewhere, nba has limited amount of talent and even more narrow ways how to get talent. It's trade or FA.
Buyouts are surpassing both ways into in advance arranged, handpicked FA , as one team pays salary of player so he can play for other team.
Cheat mode for big market FAs who get first nod in taking onto buyout "market".

[anothermagicfan]

There's arguments for both sides of this but I think you're missing the point here. You compared Bradley Beal getting bought out and signing in La to Cole and jock whoever going to Milwaukee and Portland. Add in Ayton. You got 3 players that are proven difference makers going to cap strapped LA teams super cheap and 2 irrelevant guys going to Portland and Milwaukee. Ok the Milwaukee Portland situations are different because of lilliard affecting both teams. The point is that buyouts have not circumvented large market teams from having an unfair advantage.

We got tyus for 7 million and the clippers got Beal for 5.3


You don't see anything wrong with that?

I don’t. Look beyond Beal’s raw stats and you’ll see he hasn’t played winning basketball in close to a decade.

He didn’t like being the number three option in Phoenix, even though he knew they already had Durant and Booker when he waived his no-trade clause to go there in the first place.

I have a suspicion that the Beal experiment could end up be a total disaster for LA. He shot the ball fine for Phoenix, but he also immediately inflected their whole team with a give up malaise and he also doesn’t have a role player mentality which is what he needs to be now at this point in his career.

I think what you said about these guys being “proven difference makers” is where we’re getting lost.

Those guys might have been that at one time, perhaps when they signed their previous contracts. But I wouldn’t say any of them are that at this point.

Beals not the same player he was a few years back for sure but he's not a guy that should be playing for 5.3 million. Oh wait he's not he's only getting paid that by the Lakers and it's the suns that are really paying him.

Ayton, Beal and Smart are the gems of the buyout market and they all went to LA teams and the LA teams didn't have to pay anything for them. It's the same BS that's been going on for years just done differently now.

[Skybox]

Hopefully, we are entering a period where bought out vets and other assorted ring-chasers want to be in sunny ORL...until then, boo f**kin' hoo - life's not fair

[anothermagicfan]

Since this is the around the league thread what dominoes are left to fall in the NBA?

Kuminga
Giddey
Vucevik?

Any guesses where they land?

[anothermagicfan]

Since this is the around the league thread what dominoes are left to fall in the NBA?

Kuminga
Giddey
Vucevic?

Any guesses where they land?

[msmoore66]

Nikola Jokic mentioned in his China tour that he could possibly not playing basketball in several years.

Anybody thinks Jokic is enjoying his time in Denver?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I dunno if it is Denver per se, I just think Jokic doesn't love basketball as much as we all like to think he does.

Bro was crying like a baby yesterday when his horse won

I think he loves basketball but treats it as a job, i'm not sure he really likes living in USA in general. He has very close circle of friends from childhood ( + brothers ) and married his highschool love.

He is private person, all the spotlights don't really mean much to him.

Yeah that is the vibe I was getting. And to be honest, as a non lover of the bright lights etc myself, Colorado appeals, so maybe he doesn't mind it there?

[pepe1991]

I dunno if it is Denver per se, I just think Jokic doesn't love basketball as much as we all like to think he does.

Bro was crying like a baby yesterday when his horse won

I think he loves basketball but treats it as a job, i'm not sure he really likes living in USA in general. He has very close circle of friends from childhood ( + brothers ) and married his highschool love.

He is private person, all the spotlights don't really mean much to him.

Yeah that is the vibe I was getting. And to be honest, as a non lover of the bright lights etc myself, Colorado appeals, so maybe he doesn't mind it there?

I guess it depends how long he wants to play and what is his basketball goal. If he is considering retirement around age of 35, than staying for 4-5 more years with Denver will help his case for legendary player who stayed with same team, a-la Dirk.

If he wants to chase glory, than he needs 2-3 more rings to be considered one of greatest ever. Denver will continue to be unattractive FA/trade destination for many players and he will leave eventually.

[MasterGMer]

What if Luka doesn't sign an extension with Lakers? That will be interesting...

[eyriq]

Read on Twitter

?t=5Zsrxagsn5nslN4qTePkkA&s=19

[tooler]

Do we think Atlanta is for real or not? Pretty interesting team on paper. Then again, so are the Magic...

[pepe1991]

Do we think Atlanta is for real or not? Pretty interesting team on paper. Then again, so are the Magic...

Real deal on crappy East to win 48 games? Sure. They will have enough games to face Hornets, Wizards, Nets, 76ers ( new reports about Embiid ain't pretty ), Bulls etc.

More than that? They are talented but also Porzingis is always broken, Johnson was hurt whole last year, Okongwu is often hurt.

BUT.
They now have assets to chase down superstar.

They will have $43M of expiring money ( Kennard, Zingis) + unprotected Pelicans or Bucks best pick swap+ top 4 protected pick from 2027 among Pelicans and Bucks.

So they can cook something. ( Fishing for Giannis ? )

[eyriq]

Do we think Atlanta is for real or not? Pretty interesting team on paper. Then again, so are the Magic...

I lean towards them being "for real" as a good playoff team, fringe contender. Two-way roster balance, wing depth, high shooting ceiling, and weak East all work to their favor. 47+ wins seems reasonable.