What can be done about the number of buyouts?

[shrink]

If bad teams traded their good bench players, this would be solved right?

Like NY should have flipped Wes, Atl should have flipped Lin.. Same with Ellington...

But as we saw last year, ATL couldn’t get a late first for the package of Ilyasova and Bellinelli - specifically BECAUSE we allow buy outs.

With buy outs in the system, there was no reason for PHI to offer to trade even a late first, since they could get them later for free, and without the cap hit.

[the_process]

The problem as I see it is two-fold.

First, the league tries to use a salary cap to create parity in the league. When a contender can acquire a vet 5th starter, or 20 minute rotation player for the minimum, you are disrupting the parity of the league.

Second, the league has trading as a mechanism to allow teams who are out of the playoff race to trade these players for future assets, to help that parity in the future, and give fans of those teams something to look forward to. When players and teams know they are going to be bought out, and often the destination they are likely to land, there is no incentive for a win-now team to give up substantial assets, especially for a helpful expiring deal. If a future second rounder is all you can get for a starter, parity shifts. In addition, a buy out guarantees zero production from the remaining portion of that salary - another pain for the fans of that team.

Is it too extreme to say that if a player signs a contract for a team through a season, then they shouldn’t be allowed to sign with a different team within that timeframe?

What if the team wants to release the player for whatever reason? Now the player has no team and can't sign elsewhere.

I have no problem with that, since he chose to sign that contract (he’s a grown up) to provide services to that team for that time period. This should be a part of the system since players get fully guaranteed contracts — they get paid no matter what.

It's not about just getting paid, though. It's about the ability to work. If you really want to avoid buyout season, though, why not just change the trade rules?

[the_process]

If bad teams traded their good bench players, this would be solved right?

Like NY should have flipped Wes, Atl should have flipped Lin.. Same with Ellington...

But as we saw last year, ATL couldn’t get a late first for the package of Ilyasova and Bellinelli - specifically BECAUSE we allow buy outs.

With buy outs in the system, there was no reason for PHI to offer to trade even a late first, since they could get them later for free, and without the cap hit.

There's never a guarantee that players get bought out, and there's never a guarantee you can sign players on the buyout market.

PHI didn't offer a 1st for Beli or Ersan because they weren't worth it.

[Monky15]

Off the top of my head, what if the vet min exception was not available after the trade deadline? If you want to add a player by buyout, you have to have kept one of your larger exceptions. Otherwise you have to trade for them like everyone else.

It is often literally the only way to add a player of any kind if a team suffers an injury etc after the trade deadline. The min exception is how a Gary Payton II gets signed to whatever team signed him last. I think your solution would be akin to taking all the air out of the room to stop Bob from accounting from farting. It would work in a strict sense, but everyone would suffocate which *might* be worse.

How about it doesn't apply to players who are still under contract with another team? That means you can pick up fringe NBA players from D-league or 10 day contracts or whatever, but not other teams' cuts, unless you've held on to cap space or a limited exception.

Players bought out after the trade deadline can only be signed using an exception (I'd consider allowing teams to use TPE's to sign guys for vet min only). That still leaves all the other borderline NBA players available to be had for the vet minimum to teams without an exception.

[Monky15]

I find it funny that teams will say we didn't move player X cos we couldn't get a late 1st and then the guy gets bought out. Maybe just settle for a 2nd or 4. Surely that's better than nothing.

[bondom34]

I
I think OP is looking too strongly at the good teams for taking okay players for free instead of blaming the team that didn’t take the value they could get.

Sums it up well to me.

[K_chile22]

I'm with you becorz.indonr like it. It's more of the rich get richer scheme that creates a competitive imbalance and then exacerbates it.

Sent from my SM-N950U using Tapatalk

Top 1-4 seeds of both conferences combined have signed a total of 2 players, and one only signed because that team lost their best player due to injury. Not a single Western Conference playoff team has signed a buyout guy and the only one left worth noting at this point is Markieff. This is a huge overreaction.


EDIT forgot about my own team because those buyouts happened sooner. They have two but neither were doing much of anything before being bought out. Rivers was God awful and Faried hasn't been given consistent minutes in 2 years

[Dn4sty]

The only way to deter buyouts would be to make the financial hits far greater for the player and or team.

You have to remove (or greatly) reduce the financial incentives on both sides (player and team). A buyout can still happen, but no longer will a player be able to recoup the money he gives back, and the team will not be able to save the money the player gives back.

Further in order to sign a guy that is bought out, you’d have to have either the BAE, MLE, TMLE, or Room exception left available to do so.

You could tweak some things a bit to work through issues, but I think this would still allow a team

[shrink]

I find it funny that teams will say we didn't move player X cos we couldn't get a late 1st and then the guy gets bought out. Maybe just settle for a 2nd or 4. Surely that's better than nothing.

But the reason they can only get a second is BECAUSE of the buy out rules. The economic value is unfair, because the rule makes it unfair.

There’s no reason for PHI to trade fair value for something they can get for free later.

[shrink]

If bad teams traded their good bench players, this would be solved right?

Like NY should have flipped Wes, Atl should have flipped Lin.. Same with Ellington...

But as we saw last year, ATL couldn’t get a late first for the package of Ilyasova and Bellinelli - specifically BECAUSE we allow buy outs.

With buy outs in the system, there was no reason for PHI to offer to trade even a late first, since they could get them later for free, and without the cap hit.

There's never a guarantee that players get bought out, and there's never a guarantee you can sign players on the buyout market.

PHI didn't offer a 1st for Beli or Ersan because they weren't worth it.

There was talks about the players going to PHI through buy outs for the week leading up to the trade deadline, just like this year there were several players linked to teams once they were bought out.

And Ilyasova and Belinelli combined were certainly worth trading a late first, if trading was the only way to add two good rotation players to fill out the playoff roster. Unfortunately, buy out rules allow that to be done for free, gaining players on vet min contracts that provide more than vet min production. Nobody is going to be able to sign them to vet min contracts in summer, in a legitimate free agency, the buy out market is clearly an unfair bargain.

[Dn4sty]

I
I think OP is looking too strongly at the good teams for taking okay players for free instead of blaming the team that didn’t take the value they could get.

Sums it up well to me.

There are some crazy bad GMs in the league as well. If you are tanking, you almost always take back long term money for legit assets.

Ellington should not have been allowed to go to Detroit. The Suns could have easily flipped him to a 3rd team for an ok 2nd round pick. OKC (yes I’m a fan) would have gladly giveb you Abrines (saves a bit a of money for Suns) and a legit 2nd round pick for him.

The Pelicans should not have traded Johnson for Morris (only to turn around and release him). Morris has legit value.

[Dn4sty]

I find it funny that teams will say we didn't move player X cos we couldn't get a late 1st and then the guy gets bought out. Maybe just settle for a 2nd or 4. Surely that's better than nothing.

But the reason they can only get a second is BECAUSE of the buy out rules. The economic value is unfair, because the rule makes it unfair.

There’s no reason for PHI to trade fair value for something they can get for free later.

Yep. Also deals are pre-arranged. If the NBA is really against tampering, then they have to keep stuff like what happened with Belinelli and Ilyasova from happening. It was pretty obvious what Philly did.

[jbk1234]

You could tax a team a second round pick for signing a bought out player. But that presents other problems as the best teams would surrender less value.

If you really wanted to put a damper on it, make the player give back no less than 25% of his salary. Also, make the team signing the player pay at least 25% (Let them use TPEs or DPEs).

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[Monky15]

What about a buyout lottery draft. It costs a 2nd or 2M to enter the draft and it goes for as many rounds as teams want. Draft order is the lottery. 2nds are auctioned off for cash and the money dispersed to the teams that had bought out players who were drafted.

[jayjaysee]

If bad teams traded their good bench players, this would be solved right?

Like NY should have flipped Wes, Atl should have flipped Lin.. Same with Ellington...

But as we saw last year, ATL couldn’t get a late first for the package of Ilyasova and Bellinelli - specifically BECAUSE we allow buy outs.

With buy outs in the system, there was no reason for PHI to offer to trade even a late first, since they could get them later for free, and without the cap hit.

My memory isn’t so good with specifics..

But sure, Philly wasn’t willing to give up proper value because backchannel had some agreed upon if bought out they’d sign there.

What about all the other teams Atlanta could have traded with? They weren’t worth a first, but Atlanta could have got a second for each. Then Philly wouldn’t have got two rotation pieces for free.

Atlanta could have traded Ersan to Utah and Belli to Minnesota. And had two 2nds in 2023 waiting for them.

Instead, they wanted what they wanted, ended up with nothing and bought them out. I can understand wanting to keep cap flexibility, so they should have settled with less value and taken what they could get attached to a worse expiring. They didn’t. They lose. The player wins. Philly wins.

I didn’t want to make it purely about Atlanta though, because multiple teams did the same thing. But ya, I blame the team for not settling for what they could get.

[winter_mute_13]

If bad teams traded their good bench players, this would be solved right?

Like NY should have flipped Wes, Atl should have flipped Lin.. Same with Ellington..

I think you've identified the root cause.

I don't think there's a problem with the buyout mechanism. It serves its purpose, and is generally a win-win for both team and player. The real issue is that still useful players are going into buyout rather than getting traded.

And the reason for that is that their contract value is too high for their contributions. Wes Matthews at $18m is very much overpaid, but he becomes a bargain at the vet min. There ought to be a middle way.

I would propose that the system used for amnesty players could be used here. Players who get waived become eligible to be bidded on by teams. Say, the winning bid for Wes is $5m (this assumes available cap space or exception). The winning team then takes on Wes with a $5m cap hit, and with the money partially offsetting the buyout that the original team payed.

In reality of course, nothing will get done because this really isn't that big of an issue. Players would not want to give away the freedom they currently have get with the current system (unless the possibility of double dipping is lucrative enough, I guess). Teams OTOH will be split - teams that can get buyout FAs readily won't want to change a thing.

[Resistance]

Teams might not be as willing to give up first round picks as some are expecting.

Denver and Houston used first round picks to dump salary.

Golden State, OKC etc are in deep as luxury tax payers and need first round picks on cost controlled contracts to help ease some of the financial pain.

Look at the list of teams on Tankathon and take note of how many of the teams in the #20 - #30 range have already traded their first round picks.

Maybe a few more first round picks can be squeezed from the top teams, but probably not as many as some are expecting.

[DanishLakerFan]

I am of the opinion that buyouts are becoming too commonplace in the NBA. Buyout players are actually improving the best teams at little cost while smaller teams are being forced to lose some pretty good players because it "is the right thing to do for your veteran players". A team like the Hawks should not be losing a good player like Jeremy Lin so he can sign with the best team in the east for very little money, for example. That just doesn't make sense to me. Good teams should not get better for free and bad teams shouldn't be tanking by giving up the players they have.

Do you all think this is as big of an issue as I do?

What steps do you think the league can take to fix the issue?

One thing I thought of was not allowing teams to save small amounts of money when they cut a player. For example, I don't think that Lin should be able to give back like $50,000 back to the Hawks to obtain a buyout. The Hawks should be forced to pay full Lin price. But I think if the Thunder and Alex Abrines want to agree to a buyout where Abrines doesn't earn the remainder of his contract, that is fine. But I don't think that would work entirely because I think the Hawks would still release Lin at full price, simply because they want to do right for the veteran.

What do you all think?

(Mods, if you think this is better off in the general board, please move. But I felt it belonged here?)

Good post!

I'm torn on the matter. On one hand i think its fine that a player and two teams can benefit from a buyout, on the other hand i think its a direct consequence of teams tanking, which i dont really like. Also, it's always the top-tier teams that benefit from these buy-outs and not the 5-10th seeded teams.

Maybe if they had an auction or sorts for the buy-out candidates where the highest bidder get the player. That way, a guy like Jeremy Lin would probably go to Sac who can offer more money than the Raptors. A simpler solution could be to have a rule that said that tax-paying teams weren't allowed to pick up playes that were bought out.

[TBri1974]

It is an interesting question. What if the market worked such that whatever salary a bought out player received - for the period that players as bought out for - was pushed to recoup the payment made by the team that bought him out. That would mean a better advantage for those teams buying out a player (to do the right thing) but also less money for the player (as the new money goes to the old team, unless it is more than the team was making - stopping a layer like Joakim Noah from getting essentially two salaries as a reward for acting like a jerk). On the flip side, we are seeing more contracts like JR Smith, Lance Thomas and Pau Gasol where the final year is not fully guaranteed.

[shrink]

Suppose there was a rule where women were only allowed to be paid 10 cents on the dollar. If they chose not to trade their efforts for that price, people shouldn’t focus on “they were too greedy for not going to work, and now they get nothing.” They should focus on creating a fair rule.

It is especially important in the NBA that players cost teams what they are worth, because we use a salary cap to help league parity. It’s true Wes Matthews wasn’t worth $20 mil, but it’s also true that he’s worth far more than the minimum, as a fifth starter on a playoff contender. The current rule is broken.