It causes the owners to spend a lot more money.  I doubt they would be for this. 

You identified the obvious problem. If homegrown players offer significant cap advantages, then draft picks (and draft positioning) become massively more valuable.

I don’t see Adam Silver following up years of “anti tanking” as a core focus.. with a rule change that makes high draft picks even more valuable

I get the sentiment of the idea, if you draft and develop a player you never want to be penalized for your own scouting and development success. But perhaps teams should be more diligent with the contracts they give out?? Here’s my take:

If a team gives a player a “bad” contract, thats on them – homegrown status has nothing to do with it.

When Boston signed Brown to his massive extension, many folks (me included) thought it was an overpay. They knew ahead of time that Brown and Tatum would be massive salary hits down the road and did it any way, thats OK, it worked! They got a ring out of it. To now state that it’s unfair to Boston that the contract they delivered to Brown and now decided is too rich for their blood is an injustice is just backwards to me.

Homegrown salary relief creates a two tiered contract system.

The other issue that no one is really talking about is: “what if the contract becomes a negative asset?” Let’s use Ja Morant for instance. Let’s say he signs a \(100m deal with Memphis, which only counts for \)85m for Grizzles cap because he was drafted by Memphis. If Memphis is the only team that can receive this benefit for the Morant contract, that means that for everyone else in the league Morant is actually a $100m player which actually makes it *harder* for Memphis to trade Ja because his nominal salary cap value is not consistent. Its the basketball equivalent of golden handcuffs.

The lottery is a random crapshoot, discounting homegrown contracts just adds more volatility to team building and rewards teams for getting lucky in the lottery. Which actually may incentivize tanking.

If this rule only applies to players you drafted, does a case like SGA and/or draft-day trades work? Either way, by giving contracts of drafted players this extra salary cap relief you’re actually putting more value on the draft and the draft lottery and incentivizing teams to tank even more because of the potential salary cap relief in the future.

It would also make teams incentivized to never trade or let players walk in free agency. Draft picks would be more important than anything.

I really think it’s just the fans that want this.

GM’s might complain when they lose someone to the aprons. But placing this much value on draft and drafting well would hurt ability to build in any other way. And draft is a lot to do with luck.

The players prefer whatever helps them move more freely to the city of their choosing. I don’t think they’d be happy about feeling stuck with the team they were drafted with. Leaving though trade of free agency suddenly you’re at a competitive disadvantage for the rest of you career. Everyone else has players of similar caliber but on less money. Less teams would be interested all together. Etc.

There’s a lot of issues with this idea tbh

Unpopular Opinion: this is actually bad.

It will significantly decrease league parity. If you hit your lottery picks you can build a dynasty. If you miss then you’re screwed and there’s no way to recover. 

And given that the NBA is all about tanking and lottery picks it becomes way too luck driven. Gotta win the lottery, on a year with hall of fame draft talent, and you have to nail the picks.

Drafting is obviously important and teams that draft well should be rewarded. But it shouldn’t be the thing that determines winners and losers.

I can’t imagine the big market teams ever supporting this. Teams like the Knicks or Lakers are rarely drafting that high, so they wouldn’t benefit as much.

And it makes it a lot harder for them to obtain ‘disgruntled’ stars from other teams.

The Warriors drafted Curry, Klay and Draymond, and then just paid as much tax as they needed to in order to keep all three.

The second apron was specifically built to prevent that from happening again.

Yes. please implement this immediately. Seriously…I can’t handle Jamal getting traded 12 months from now because the NBA changed the rules after we had already built our team.

Does that not make bad contracts further untradeable? I’m sure owners don’t want it but I also doubt top stars want it either.

Or maybe just don’t give a Supermax to a guy who’s not a top 10 player. It’s ridiculous how many guys get max contracts. Only a handful of players are truly worth that much money. We need to just normalize second tier stars not getting full max contracts

I don’t think it makes sense to allow teams that draft well to have a higher cap than teams that don’t.

Teams will go right back to tanking hard year over year, just be more strategic about it with the new lottery rules.

The brokenness of the system is that there’s a cap that makes it a death sentence to retain multiple homegrown stars. There’s nothing wrong with teams overpaying to avoid losing stars, that’s how things can and should work in a market system.

Those teams do it to themselves. If it’s such a death sentence to sign them to that contract, dare another team to do it. Team’s don’t play hard enough with the contracts they negotiate and then blame the system for contracts they drew up and agreed to pay. If defaulting to “we’ve got to pay him” ruins your chances to win, don’t default to “we’ve got to pay him”.

This is nonsense. The Cavs and Suns were not at risk of losing them for nothing; they could have traded them for huge hauls instead of signing them to supermaxes.

The dollar amounts are higher than fans are used to seeing because the cap keeps going up because the league is making a ton of money.

And fans consistently misunderstand max contracts. They are artificial limits on what superstars make, not enhancers.

People are too focused on the numbers. We’re dealing with percentages of the cap. The cap goes up every year so the numbers always look crazy because they’re always the highest we’ve ever seen. I’ve been following the league for a while and every year there are contracts that people freak out about like this. The actual numbers aren’t what matters.

There are two big issues. The first is the Derrick Rose rule and the supermax spike to rookie extensions. It was fucked up last year that it was actively a bit disappointing that Mobley won DPOY because it meant he was going to make an additional 5% of the cap. Something is wrong when it’s actively damaging to a team for a young guy to win an award.

The second issue is the 10-year vet pay raise that players are eligible for right as they’re starting to decline. THIS is what Boston traded Brown to avoid. Giving Tatum and Brown 70% of the cap is absolutely not tenable. It is also what the Celtics would have to do to keep both. It’s getting lost for some folks that Mitchell’s contract number is actually him doing a solid by extending now instead of waiting until next summer when he’d be eligible for 35% of the cap as a ten year vet instead of the 30% he extended for. It’s a no win situation for teams. You have this dude who has been awesome with your team for a long time and your options are a) sign them to a contract where they’ll be making 35% of the cap in the fourteenth year of their career or b) trade a cornerstone of your franchise to avoid a situation where it’s basically impossible to build a team around your hometown guys. When intelligently navigating the cap is so critical to building a successful team, it makes absolutely zero fucking sense to have guys who are winding down their careers making the more money than anyone else in the league.

Edit: I was wrong—Mitchell is getting 35% of the cap.

I think we should talk in terms of cap hit, rather than absolute dollars, because contracts are going up so fast that a max from a few years ago is a mid-level contract now. 

What are you saying man? Teams will always try to lock in star players they value if they’re willing to sign for them. Back in the day they literally signed 7 year max contracts.

They sign those players because they know there’s literally no FA they could max unless the team that has the player doesn’t wanna max him, and at that point that FA is already questionable.

Star players have always taken up huge percentages of the team’s salary cap.

They’re paid that bc teams feel other teams will pay that much. You seem to feel that these players should have their salaries suppressed by being unable to go elsewhere.

The solution where everybody wins is definitely the ability for players you have drafted still getting the 35% Max. But counting for only 30%-25% of the cap. This allows Stars to still get paid their worth.

But I also think it would be worth while for it to count for Non Max players that you drafted. Reward teams for drafting well. For instance if you drafted a player in the 2nd round who turns into a great role player. Let their 10-15-20 Million dollar salary count for 2-5% less against your cap for each Bird Year you have for them. And allowing it to work for undrafted players as well assuming you signed them since they were a rookie.

Good teams get rewarded for team building. It also cuts down on players signing maxes and forcing their way out. Because teams have to be able to absorb that Star players 35% Max instead of their 25-30% cap hit. Role players also get a better sense of security in being traded. Because new teams have to be able to take in their true salaries as well.

It might not be a perfect solution but I think it would help tremendously

Hard cap. This is a solved problem.

NBA role players have had inflated contracts for a long ass time. We have seen a decade of overpays. I don’t have a problem with this.

or front offices just learn to deliver the ‘insult’ of paying someone 200 million dollars instead of 300.

The problem is the defacto salary cap “underpays” the ultra elite tier generational players and consequently raises a bunch of good players into the same pay grade as the generational player contracts that are artificially suppressed. There’s a reason in baseball you dont see everyone giving their star player the shohei ohtani or juan soto contracts

Just get rid of true max all together

No team is paying Jaylen Brown or Donovan Mitchell 70 mil/year if it is not a predetermined number

Probably cause they all think/hope they can be that guy one day

The alternative is what other sports have, which is that a single player can’t have their salary capped. The NBA’s solution is already much more pro-middle class of players than the other leagues.

Supermax isn’t a mistake. The difference between the super max and the regular max shouldn’t count against the cap though

The middle class sometimes benefits from this system. The 2016 offseason, Mamu, Post and Nurkic all signing for over 10m a year. That ‘lucky’ group of role players don’t think they need reform and the others are hoping they’re next.

The players weren’t the ones advocating for the 2nd apron

I get the sentiment for this, but I’m not quite sure why everyone thinks this solves the problem.

If Boston gave Jaylen Brown a bad contract, that’s on them. It’s not really impacted by the fact that he was homegrown. I remember thinking Browns contract was too high when it was first signed, now Boston has to pay for it.

What happens if the player is traded? Teams will sign their stars for higher contracts knowing that they get a homegrown discount but that means the contract is harder to move if they actually want to trade the asset.

I’m honestly not sure that’s good for balance these days.

With the lottery as it is now it’s basically pure luck.

Should the Spurs really have an advantage for a decade because they lucked into Wemby?

Honestly you don’t see great (superstar) players leave in free agency very often anyway because of the way that you can sign for more money with your existing team, it just makes more sense to sign the big deal and then get traded later

everyone continues to clown the Wolves for doing the same thing with Kat, yet for some reason the Celtics are being looked at as a bummer while the Wolves were a laughingstock.. fuck the big market bias let’s start running some stories about how Tatum wants out now and force that issue..

Lowe isn’t blaming either. Just pointing out the problem

The point Lowe is making is they’re heavily incentivized to off the supermax bc you get pennies on the dollar if they leave.

Seems like a difficult problem to solve. My initial thought is comp picks like in the nfl, but thats tough in a league where the 2nd Round is already a joke.

Also worth noting teams can do what the Jazz did and offer a “above the max, under the supermax” deal instead of simply spending every dollar available. Kind of surprised we haven’t seen more cases like this occur.

The players signed off on this system. Everyone is at fault. 

They also spent HUGE outside of their homegrown core and the bill finally came due. There is a choice and that choice is homegrown Jaylen Brown or the traded for Derrick White.

Boston chose to keep White and reset their books getting off of Brown.

Right.

This is exactly how a salary cap system should work.

Every team should be having to make hard choices every season. And hitting on a great draft pick shouldn’t exempt you from this process.

It’s one thing the NFL have absolutely nailed.

The point is 99% teams will pay a max for their all-star because it’s either pay the max, or someone else will. Then the team that has the player’s max is worth more too than a max from another team, so its an even more rich contract. It’s kind of a lose-lose situation. That’s the exact reason we just saw Cleveland pay Mitchell the max.

If KAT and Brunson were FAs this upcoming year and wanted a Max, I’d almost ensure you’d rather pay the max than risk losing them. Unfortunately that’s the way the NBA works under this current ruleset.

This is my thing. Teams are just throwing around max contracts. Why? There aren’t 30 players in the league worth max contracts.

Exactly. The league wants parity. Parity isn’t a bad thing.

Especially when a bunch of dudes are ending up on all-nba teams entirely due to disqualification of better players. Anthony Edwards misses one too many games = someone else gets a big pay bump? Why?