Strait of Mackinac

From Doc Rivers to Milwaukee, Thanasis will be free.

In the face!

Yeah that’s called not giving your employees a raise

This is practically fan fiction.

Herb Simon has owned the Pacers for 43 years. The luxury tax has been since 2002, so for only 24 years.

The Pacers paid the tax for contending teams in 2002, 2003, and 2005. After 2005, the team was blown up because of the Malice and it took until 2012 to build another contending team.

In the summer of 2014, the Pacers offered Lance Stephenson a 5-year deal that would’ve kept that team’s core together and put the Pacers into the tax to do so. Lance instead decided to go to the Hornets for a 3-year deal of materially identical AAV. The idea from Lance’s camp was that he’d shine in Charlotte & get a really big contract after a couple years. This did not work out well for Lance.

Then PG broke his leg in half; Roy Hibbert became unplayable; and David West both crashed out and washed out. Larry Bird then decided to let Vogel go (mistake), traded George Hill for Teague (mistake), and made other stupid moves that were supposed to create an offensively minded team for when PG returned. That team was bad and showed no real contending potential even though Bird & PG thought that the team was just 1 piece away (delusional), so the org split with bird Bird and PG. Started over with Oladipo, which showed some promise, but remained well short of contention before Oladipo started running into injury issues.

The next contending team ended up being the Haliburton-Siakam team. Because of broader 2023 CBA implications, Myles was not expected to be offered a large contract by any team. The anticipated lack of interest + Haliburton’s G7 injury + Myles disappearing in 2x ECF series & the Finals = little reason for the Pacers to be overeager to resign Myles to big money (for a center) and prematurely start the clock on the repeat taxpayer penalty.

Pacers’ FO claims that they would’ve matched Milwaukee’s AAV to make Myles the ~9th highest paid center had they been given the chance. This is in-line with Simon’s past willingness to pay the tax to keep contending cores together and nothing credible has come out to dispute the Pacers’ claim. Every indication is that the Pacers were willing to match Milwaukee’s AAV for Myles, even after Haliburton’s injury & Myles disappearing deep in the playoffs for the 2 years in a row.

I don’t blame Myles for accepting Milwaukee’s offer, but I also don’t blame the Pacers for not pursuing Myles more aggressively. Myles’ contract is big, especially considering playoff no-shows, rebounding issues, and a history of middling production before (and now after) playing with Haliburton.

____

Keep in mind that the 2005, 2011, and 2016 CBAs all worked to make the tax prohibitively expensive for most small market teams. These CBAs introduced the repeat taxpayer penalty & kept increasing the monetary penalties for paying the tax without adding any other penalties. This created a league wherein big markets could easily outbid small markets for talent on the basis that small market teams could not clear enough profit to afford to bidding wars against an ever escalating tax schedule. Yet Simon was willing to pay the tax for contending teams during this era, as was made evident by the 5-year contract offered to Lance in 2014 and Pacers’ apparent willingness to match Milwaukee’s AAV for Myles.

____

The Pacers will probably go into the aprons for the Haliburton team. Either this off-season or at the ‘26-‘27 trade deadline, after the front office gets to assess the team’s weaknesses with Haliburton & Zu in the starting lineup together.

Had Myles given the Pacers an opportunity to bid against Milwaukee’s (and not traded him at the deadline), the Pacers would’ve already paid the tax for this season.

Had the lottery gods given the Pacers a top-4 pick, the Pacers would be lined up for the 1st apron bc of the rookie scale contract. (Say want you want about the trade, but you don’t embrace a tank at the trade deadline in such a way that increases your odds of paying the tax if your owner refuses to pay the tax.) Without lottery luck, the Pacers maintained roster flexibility & the FO has been planning to take advantage.

____

Cheapest/worst owner(s) in the NBA has to go to the Bulls’ owners.

There was a 15+ year window in which NBA CBAs (unintentionally?) gave big markets a much more opportunity to land premiere talent than small markets.

The Bulls play in the NBA’s 3rd biggest market. They have the biggest arena in the NBA, which earns them a lot of game day revenue. Unlike NYC & LA, the Chicago’s market isn’t split between multiple teams. (If anything, the Bulls’ market extends quite deep into northern Indiana. The Bucks are close, but you don’t run into a lot of Bucks fans until you’re across the state line & firmly into the Bucks’ actual home market.)

Yet, for some reason, the Bulls were managed as if Chicago were Memphis-sized while even the “second” teams of NYC & LA swung for the fences once or twice. What the fuck.

Crazy that this same team offered Ayton a max offer sheet

Lakers fans, bro…

Does your ass hurt after pulling that pile of bullshit out of it?

NBA players don’t have 1% of ours, though. They are paid tens of millions, generational wealth, to work out and play ball. Some even find that inadequate and shill out for trash ass gambling sites.

Not with that contract lol

Nah it’s greedy as fuck when you already have hundreds of millions to endorse that dystopian bullshit

at absolute minimum it’s a conflict of interest - people could bet on whether he was going to be traded before the deadline last season on Kalshi

Bruh… I didn’t even say anything yet. I just asked them if they heard about the trade talks.

How are you already jumping to conclusions? 😂

Netflix should be throwing their whole budget at Madrid to get a behind the scenes documentary greenlit.

-At the start of the season they hired Xabi Alonso, the most sought after manager in domestic football at the time, and a former Real player. He had 2 seasons prior managed to have an invincible season in the bundesliga (no losses) ending Bayerns streak of 11 consecutive bundesliga titles. The last team to manage this in European top leagues was Arsenal in 2004. He also won the DFB Cup (Germanys domestic cup competition) and was runner up in the Europa League (2nd tier of European club football) in the same season.

-He was then fired mid season despite good performances due to a player revolt, with players not wanting to watch footage, train more intensively or press more during matches.

-This resulted in Arbeloa being hired. He was previously managing the Real Madrid B teams and is nowhere near the skill level required to manage Real Madrid and just exists as a yes man for the player, repeatedly iterating that anything that goes wrong is his fault.

-Performance wise they have been incredibly underwhelming, being eliminated in the domestic club competition by Albacete, a team that at the time was 17th in the Spanish division and being at risk of being relegated to the second. They have already lost LaLiga to their rivals Barcelona and where knocked out of the Champions League in the Quarter-Finals against a vastly superior Bayern side.

-Onfield they have several issues, their biggest being, that they’re two best players, Vini Jr. and Mbappe play the exact same role and both don’t track back/ don’t press resulting in their performances often being better when only one plays.

-This has caused tensions in the locker room to flare up with last week two players, Tchouameni and Valverde having a very public fight.

-Now the clubs president Florentino Perez has called an election, though he has made the requirements to run against him incredibly high, such as mandating 20 years of club membership and being able to have the financial backing of 200 million.

-In the press conference where he announced this the where a lot of insane and very sexist statements coming from him leading people to believe that he has become somewhat senile.

-They are now slated to hire Jose Mourinho, also known as the “Special One” for next season. Despite previously having lead Madrid to success, Mourinho has had a significant drop of in his managerial qualities and is known for often being a very controversial figure, both in the media and in the locker room.

I definitely forgot some stuff, but it is important to remember this: Real Madrid is Europes most successful club, having a record 15 UCLs and is globaly one of the biggest clubs, if not the biggest. So all of these things are a lot more memorable and thrown into the spotlight than if it happened with almost any other team.

Check the other comment, u/Vakangwara_ came in clutch

Thank you! This is the context I missed.

edit: Is Giannis downvoting me for wanting to know some context?

I always find his philosophical humble act to be fake as hell.

So im not surprised if his hardworking on time persona is also fake.