The bigger irony is that he was only able to join the Warriors b/c of the removal of cap smoothing.

oh hell no KD burners and fanboys immediately replying to this thread because they mad 😭😭😭

It was the hardest path.

You do your best within the parameters given. Those were the parameters.

The hardest road - KD joining a 73 win team in his prime. Lack of parity worked for him

The hardest road part 2 - KD on good but not top contending teams - parity is good

He couldn’t win those cats in OKC, didn’t you hear?

Guess it was one of those “do as I say, not as I do” kinda moments

It was a decade ago and he changed his mind? sorry.

…And?

You really just clowning yourself with this. You can’t be a grown up insisting on this from 10 years ago

It’s been 10 years. People can change

Yeah him leaving GSW helped lol

The great emperor worm whipping us along the Golden Path. It was the only way.

Crazy that you got nothing from losing KD and always ended up with plentiful assets.

He did it unintentionally 😅

There are 185 players making 8 digit salaries this year

I’m not even sure that’s true, since the apron also brought the salary floor way up, and mandated using cap space before the season started. Guys like Bruce Brown and Tobias Harris clearly benefited from the new system, and I’d call them middle of the pack (Harris has gotten paid like a superstar, but iykyk)

It’s the stars and rookies who are underpaid, the guys in the middle are therefore overpaid. They have 60% of the votes in the CBA after all.

Nope

The ones that will suffer are the middle of the pack guys on max contracts

They wont be getting max contracts anymore

The middle pack guys still get paid, just not on contenders

He’s had an artificial cap on his salary his entire career. The best players have taken a pay cut since the advent of the max contract. The guys in the middle benefited from this and continue to, although not to the same degree.

Yup. Top guys will still get their max, middle guys get less. The middle gets carved out again.

Well now I miss my middle school Garfield folders.

The Kdf got eyes everywhere

This sub is smart not letting us comment with pictures because I had a meme ready

Did he negotiate the CBA?

Lol sounds like the only thing that ruined parity was KD

Pretty hypocritical given a giant cap anomaly is the only reason he was able to sign w GSW.

I agree with him though

the “parity era” from 2019-2022 was more so from the top stacked team getting injured than other teams feeling like they had a fair shot going in. I think every championship in that stretch would’ve been won by Steph/LeBron/KD with healthy squads. Since 2023 it felt like more teams were true contenders without relying on others getting hurt

“The parity era” lol

You reference it like it’s some official thing.

It’s started with play in. These last 4-5 seasons are so fun.

How soon we forget the 2004 Lakers…

Parity is not entertaining. Greatness is entertaining.

I would be shocked by the Rockets tbh

It’s gonna be thunder vs pistons finals (if OKC stays healthy) and thunder will repeat as champions.

Swap the rockets for the Cavs and I’d say none of those teams would shock me

Yes, I would be surprised if several of those teams on that list won the title. I think the real contenders are Thunder, Wolves, Pistons (depending on who they draw in the FInals) and Celtics. I would also put Cleveland on the inner list of contenders. The Nuggets just can’t stay healthy at all, the Spurs have no playoff experience, the Rockets are not serious contenders to come out of the West, and I (personally) think the Knicks would lose in a seven game series to Boston (assuming Tatum comes back on Sunday and gets his legs back in time), Detoit, and Cleveland.

Would anyone in 2021 be shocked if league was won by any of the teams: 76ers, Nets, Bucks, Jazz, Suns, Nuggets, Clippers?

That was few years prior to current appron rules.

I’d remove the pistons, Celtics(unless JT is truly in form but I feel he may need a whole season under his belt for that) rockets and spurs.

For how long would you say draftees shouldn’t count? Like, for the duration of their first contract? Or through their rookie extension? Or, like, indefinitely? I hear a lot of people say it but I don’t know how you’d actually make it work.

The only constant, now, is that we’re all gonna look up in mid-May and somehow the Wolves are gonna be in the western conference finals. They’re inevitable.

Did you get into a car accident or something? Really not that hard to understand

Oh man i feel for you. Don’t know how you sleep at night with that kinda weight on your shoulders

You think he even knows? He likely has a money manager like every other celebrity…

Meanwhile I can’t see his name without thinking that this is an almost 40 year-old grown ass man still making multiple burner accounts to shit talk coworkers on the Internet

There’s been a new NBA champion for the last 7 seasons. Literally the definition of parity.

You’d rather have Cavs vs Warriors for 4 straight years again?

I think there’s more parity now. Six straight seasons with a new team winning the finals (Raptors, Lakers, Buck, Warriors, Celtics, Thunder). Less teams having 5+ seasons of conference domination.

But I also agree and think the 2nd Apron had little to do with this. It just seems like more teams have competent front offices now.

I think the point is that it isn’t the same 4-5 teams every year

Saying this after we saw 2015-2019 be essentially Warriors vs Cavs every year is kind of crazy. Between 1984 and 2018 only ten teams won a championship and only two weren’t repeat winners (Mavs and Cavs). Since then we’ve had seven different winners in seven years and four of those either haven’t ever won or not in 50 years (Bucks). There is clearly a lot more parity

There’s more parity, but there’s like 10-12 teams that will never be contenders with how the NBA is designed.