I’ve talked to a couple of different owners whose players could be Supermax this year or next year — they’re starting to feel a little pressure from them by saying, ‘Yo, James Dolan gave high paying jobs to my family. What are you going to do?’

Someone pointed out to me why it’s “bad” when star players take pay cuts. Cuz I was of the opinion that they should if they really want to win. This was the reason. Cuz it fucks with the market.

That said, owners are shit heads and will use any excuse to not pay. I can see why it can be treacherous for a star player to take a pay cut to help win. Cuz then the wizards ask you to take a pay cut or the kings, pretending like they’ll be contenders.

to be fair, Brunson didn’t have a reason to trust them either in 2022.

Unless his dad was on a ⁵⁄₂₀ mil deal.

Trust is irrelevant with a No-Trade clause. No NTC, no team friendly deal.

Yeah this. I don’t understand why this wasn’t a bigger scandal. Like somehow it was gonna be a huge problem for the players union if Bruce Brown took a pay cut to stay on the Nuggets after ‘23 but Brunson leaving 113 mil on the table with a likely wink and nod from his family in the FO is NBD???

To where?

The team can still offer as much money as a normal max, while other teams have to clear capspace.

This wouldn’t fly in any of those places either. The reality is that most guys don’t care about winning a ring when they’re eligible for a supermax.

And no way should he take a penny less than the full supermax on his next deal

Not only 1 year earlier but 2 if he takes his opt out which also happens to be the year he goes from a super max of 30% to 35% of the cap instead. So he really left just a few million on the table over 5 seasons by grabbing the security of an earlier extension.

2 years earlier.

And he also has the luxury of having the GM/President being his Godfather. So he can trust him to a level other players can’t.

yeah it’s also not the most common situation where a player so drastically outplays their current contract that the CBA literally prevents the team from offering true market value where that situation even comes up

Yes but MANY max players take the gamble to get the super max so it’s not like others didn’t have the opportunity to do what Brunson did, but simply chose not to.

Yeah, I love Brunson, but it’s crazy how many times this claim has been repeated without the slightest bit of scrutiny.

Mitigated risk of injury.

I am sure he setup a smart Lloyds of London policy for the differential to the super max, probably had Dolan pay for it. And it probably did. Smart business.

If anything someone growing up in poverty should take the payday earlier. Instead of the possibility of more and risk to losing it.

Any player eligible for the supermax is choosing between obscene wealth or sacrificing and taking just absurd wealth instead

I don’t think whether a player makes \(350MM over 5 years or \)250MM over 4 really has a bearing on their ability to take care of their family.

His dad was a journeyman, he only played all over the place on non-guaranteed contracts. Jalen has said he and the rest of the family stayed in Jersey with his dad playing in multiple cities, including cities in Australia the Philippines and Europe. I doubt they were rolling in it

At the time I was thinking, why did this poor man’s Fred Van Vleet get paid this much?

Unrelated, when Houston signed Fred I thought, why is he getting paid this much?

Honestly the Austin Reaves threads now almost mirror what people were saying about Brunson.

Time will tell how Austin turns out and it obviously prolly won’t reach Brunson levels but I’m definitely reminding myself you never know in this league when I see those takes pop up.

Fox might not be the example you want to give at the moment

Helps that the Spurs top 3 players besides him are all on rookie deals though…

The Dodgers don’t benefit from that deal in any way?

Ohtani still also took under his value. “\(700 over 20 years" is misleading. He's actually getting paid about \)460m in 2023 dollars, which is why his CBA hit is calculated at $46m.

Compare that to Soto and his guaranteed $765m over 15 years.

Soto is getting paid significantly more than Ohtani, but he’s waaaay less valuable. And Soto is worth his contract.

Bullshit the dodgers don’t benefit, they didn’t do that contract out of kindness to Ohtani.

This is not true. The luxury tax penalty for the Dodgers is just \(46million which is a massive bargain from the \)70million if Ohtani didn’t defer like Soto’s contract.
Andrew Freidman even admitted how great of a contract it is and that’s how they had more money to sign Yamamoto, Snell, Tucker, etc because of it. Ohtani only agreed to defer as long as the Dodgers promised to spend the savings on building a Championship team around him.

Ohtani doesn’t benefit at all, he is getting just \(2million for the next 10 years instead of the 70\) million if it wasn’t deferred. And the money deferred is going to be worth a lot less than present day value as it can’t gain interest.

Hell, even Scott Boras who manages Soto is on record saying how lucky the Dodgers are and that Ohtani should have easily got an much bigger contract than Soto if he wanted to. In fact he says he is easily worth over $1 billion and is severely short changed in this interview.

The only one really benefiting from Ohtanis deferral is Ohtani because he doesn’t need to pay California taxes

Just not true. Firstly you don’t even know if Ohtani is returning to Japan after he retires. Most Japanese stars don’t. Nomo lives in LA after he retired from the Dodgers. Matsui lives in NY and Ichiro lives in Seattle now.
Secondly even if he was to return to Japan California taxes its residents on income earned anywhere in the world. It also taxes nonresidents on California-sourced income. So the State can definitely try to tax his deferments if it want’s to and there’s even a regulation specifically to go after payments of nonresidents for their performances in the state.

But even if he somehow avoids ALL taxes on his deferred payments we are talking a saving of just \(9million or so a year, or \)90mil over his contract which doesn’t even come close to making up for loss in present day value from his deferments.

Not really sure how Ohtani benefits from receiving a $700mm contract and deferring 97% of the cash payout until 10 years later…

How does he still not pay taxes down the line?

Cause history can be rewritten to match narratives that have come to fruition.

Even with proof like the Steven A Smiths of the world who were caught saying Knicks did a disservice acquiring him and sucking that Brunson hype like they were in it from the start.

When he signed the contract benefitted both sides. He got a nice pay upgrade from what Dallas was offering, didn’t get that extra year in NY though, but at least he knew that if he got them a glimpse of The Finals or a Chip/Ring before the contract up, he was going to get paid.

Bet on himself, now gonna reap the rewards. That man is king of New York for fucking ever.

It’s especially lazy when the downside scenario of what happened to Isaiah Thomas is fairly recent. I love the idea of Jalen taking less to give the team the best chance of success, and there’s likely some truth in it, but he took the most he could at the time to ensure a freak-but-possible injury didn’t derail his career/future earnings.

It also gives you security when you don’t have to play for a new contract.

It works for Ant

Ant with his 30 kids has entered the chat.

I heard it takes $20 million a year to feed and clothe a kid. Kids require wagyu beef and officially licensed baby Jordans that they’ll grow out of in a month at all times.

No one is taking less money so Joe Dumars can go out and sign some bum with the money they gave up.

The “pay cut” is to be able to use some of that salary cap to give to other teammates and keep the team from going into luxury tax territory. Brunson took a cut in his salary from the Knicks but now that he won finals MVP his marketability is at an all time high and he will more than make up for it in endorsements. Will he lose money? No but he did leave money on the table to keep players in NY in the. Hope that they win. It was a gamble and it paid off but he still sacrificed for the team.

And morons are gonna eat it up.

I would absolutely do what brunson did of I were in his shoes. Not for the sake of the team, but because he got the most money he could without waiting any longer. In the NBA your career can end at literally any moment, safest bet is to cash out as soon as possible

If he took less years than that may be true. A max later will be worth more money than a max now

He deserves to get carried for once in the playoffs

Spurs run it back with no changes except say 28min of LeBron at the 4, who says no

If the Lakers operate as a below the cap team (not re-signing LeBron), I imagine the Bulls could get some assets for taking on large salaries to open up cap space for another team to sign LeBron to a max or near-max in FA.

The Bulls have almost 70 million in space after renouncing cap holds. Like would the Bulls take like 2-3 FRPs to just take De’Aaron Fox? Spurs would then have cap space to just sign LeBron to a max. Or like Miles Bridges + Josh Green / Grant Williams + Tidjane Salaun and 1 FRP from the Hornets?

Maybe Detroit can get to max cap space, but I imagine they want to keep the Duren cap hold.

Idk, not really a ton of competitive teams with cap space this year.

*already

It’s not gonna. They already are chasing him.

Admittedly I don’t understand anything about anything but I do always wonder why stars who leave a great team to get more money don’t factor in the extra sponsorship money they’ll get if their team is good

People vastly overestimate the impact bigger markets have on endorsement deals for superstars. Lebron wasn’t being held back being in Cleveland, and it’s not like going to NYC made Amare a household name.

For the 2nd/3rd tier players there’s probably more value from access to larger local business advertising, but that’s still secondary to just getting your money from your contract.