People want parity until they realize that parity doesn’t include their teams

“Spurs vs Thunder is the real finals.”

Yeah, the playoffs have been amazing this CBA.

All the talk about the Knicks being contenders, but the fact that they managed to absolutely steamroll the playoffs came as a shock to probably everyone including Knicks fans themselves. 

Imagine how much we’d miss out on if we still had Cavs vs Warriors for the 10th year in a row

FO’s will adjust and not hand out max contracts like candy.

Celtics benefited from brown’s rookie contract and extension, he’s a ten year vet, the benefits from lottery luck should end at some point.

How are they being punished? Rookie contracts are the best possible value if you land a stellar draft pick. Anything more just overly rewards teams for lucking into certain players.

Both towns and brown were part of the team that drafted them for a decade. Brown even helped the team get title! How long should a team be entitled to the player that they drafted???

Sounds like folks just hate player movement. This isn’t even a new concept. Guys that stick around for their entire careers like Duncan Kobe and probably Curry are rare and should be rare.

and my critique of that is dudes shouldn’t have to stay on the team that drafted them. and teams shouldn’t have to tank to get the best guys. why incentivize losing again 

It’s not punishing for drafting well, it’s punishing them for giving out max contracts and over valuing certain players. Like boo hoo, the millionaire has to make 40m a year instead of 70m ?

Happens in the NFL all the time.

They literally didn’t have to they chose to do so and to allocate their money elsewhere so

Don’t pay them all the max and you won’t need to move them. It works that way in 100% of sports.

Timberwolves traded KAT because they traded for Gobert, who they famously DID NOT draft. 

I mean that’s kind of how parity works. Look at the NFL, a league that is kind of the gold standard for parity. The Seahawks literally just had to let their homegrown player that won Superbowl MVP leave in free agency because they didn’t have the cap space to pay him. The entire point is that teams can’t stockpile talented players, whether they draft them or not.

Yes, but they got to have both guys for almost a decade, won a chip, competed, and now get crunched. It’s not like the day you draft two good guys you’re fucked.

The best way to build a team is still by hitting on stars in the draft. It’s just the half-life of a team built that way is a little shorter. 

Huh? They got benefits for drafting well. They had them during their rookie contract, rookie extension and had bird rights to them. At some point you have to enforce the salary cap. If not, you are just going to have the MLB/Dodgers situation. And nobody wants that shit. If not for financial reasons, what possible reason can there be?

Yes you should, that’s how good leagues work. Look at the NFL, best league in the world. My amazing Eagles can’t pay everyone from the 2024 SB team even though we love them. Josh Sweat, Milton Williams, Isiah Rogers, etc. are beloved but got more money from someone else.

To op’s point. Knicks played the roster construction game and won. It seems rando but Leon’s vision absolutely worked. Every move he made was questioned heavily but it’s exactly who he wanted (Brunson, og, mikal) and how he envisioned it going. Except the kat pivot which was huge. But shit even that worked out beautifully.

Goomba fallacy alive and well

Teams will adjust by not overpaying bad or inefficient players. They can still have very good teams but they need to be effective at using cap space which was not as big of a deal previously

Why should teams be allowed to keep 2 supermax players as well as tons of high paid vets around them? Either you go all in on your max players and surround them with mostly rookie deals and minimums or choose to keep the role players and move on from one of the supermax’s. Even with 2 supermaxes that’s only half your total space if youre willing to go up to the second apron. That still gives teams plenty of room to build around 2 supermax deals if thats the direction they want to go.

Where in the rulebook does it say that teams have to have 2 stars?

The Kawhi, Giannis, and Jokic rings were just sandwiched between more Bron and Steph ring though. Sounds better than it really was because Bron swapped teams lol. The repeater tax still wasn’t enough imo

And before that? Bron and Steph took turns winning. Then you have the Spurs, Kobe and Shaq Lakers, and obviously the Bulls. A lot of those rings were broken up by the odd Mavs or Celtics or Pistons or Heat ring too

It’s not a proper hard cap. You can literally go above it. A proper hard cap you cannot go over by a single dollar ever.

This is assuming that all 3 of those guys are actually, truly worth a max. They aren’t. Chet as your team’s #1 option is far different than his as the 3rd (or second, either way). That team isn’t winning it. So he’s not worth a max. For past 20 yrs or wtvr, max was a status you hit. Now you have to answer legitimately if player x is worth 25 - 30% of your cap. In most cases, they aren’t. It’s no longer a status symbol. Chet is not worth a max.

Don’t pay everybody a max then and actually let these players hit RFA. Force them to get an offer. These players need to stop getting upset that a team doesn’t just want to hand them a max contract.

It really seems like everyone is melting down because of the Celtics situation. To my way of thinking, that team proved you could be pretty competitive as a below the tax team with 2 35% max players, even when one of them is out nearly the whole season and the other is overpaid. 

Counterpoint. Why should they be possible?

Not arguing for or against this cba, just that comment.

They still can. You just can’t auto max every player now.

Maybe they should continue to masterclass instead of deciding to just slap the max contract button for every one of their homegrown players 

Yeah, and there’s value to fans in continuity. If you constantly have to lose fan favorites people could lose interest.

That’s the dream! Dynasties suck for fans of 27 teams.

I mean people were crowning okc after last summer. They still have a hell of a chance to be a dynasty health permitting

I like that though.

Every fanbase deserves an opportunity to see their team succeed if they have competent management. It’s boring and unenjoyable for other fanbases if one of a few teams consistently dominate over a notable period of time. The league is also more unpredictable every year with increased parity, which makes it more fun to watch. The 2016-17 season was awful becaude everyone knew that GS winning was inevitable barring injuries.

Brunson paycut made so much possible

Goal posts constantly shift. During the Cavs warriors era all anyone ever talked about was how there was never any point to watching games because everyone know what was going to happen at the end of the season.

The offensive push-offs and ability to just pick the ball up while dribbling are right up there with flopping for me.

Doesn’t have to be mutually exclusive. Both is good.

They’re more than adjacent, they overlap significantly IMO. The chosen solution to achieve parity has been limiting the ability to acquire and retain multiple stars, drafted or otherwise. The “drafted” portion punishes teams who develop well, but they’re causalities that prevent super team formation by other means. And even though the 2nd apron only took effect a few years ago, as others have pointed out, the repeater tax was implemented about a decade ago, which was a major step in this direction.

There might still be other parity solutions that don’t punish home-grown development, and I’d totally support those. But I think it’s totally incorrect to assume OP has missed the mark, especially when you seem to be missing the connection yourself.

Players have a choice to make between maximum payday and sticking with the same team. Teams have a choice to make between maximum salary for their second, third best players and smart roster construction.

They want to make tanking worse not better. You already get insane value from the rookie contract and extension, after that they should just be like any other player.

You actually already saw the effects, Wolves sent KAT to Knicks because of the second apron. No title for Wolves, title for Knicks.

The Spurs were legitimately trash when they got lucky with Wemby. Same thing with Castle at #4. Moving up to get Harper was an anomaly but Wemby had a legitimate injury and Fox needed surgery on his broken hand.

It’s not like they were sitting healthy guys to tank. Those teams just plain sucked.

This! the frustration is that organizations that put significant effort in drafting and player development will now have a much harder time retaining those players further down the line. The fear not yet realized is the Celtics, Thunder, and Spurs basically developing players for other teams.

You did draft develop and keep a superstar. Tatum. You just happened to draft 2 in a row is the issue

Drafted AND developed * (which I think gets lost sometimes)

I understand why this happens in the NFL; with 53 players on a team, it’s impossible to pay everyone top dollar.

However, the NFL doesn’t have the same problem as the NBA. In the NBA, it’s pretty obvious that most players on the 30 teams would prefer to play for only about 10 or 11 of those teams.

You can tell which ones they are if you look at the rankings each year.

Exactly. Baseball is even more unpredictable than Basketball. BlueJays had so many opportunities missed. Had they won I don’t think anyone would even have the parity narrative.

Dodgers used to be a good regular season team then always lose in the playoffs. You need your players clicking at the right time along with luck to get over the line.

Baseball has a bisected league. If you’re in the top half of spending, you can win. So that’s a lot of teams. But if you’re in the bottom half, you cannot.

The kicker is that every team can afford to spend more. Some owners just don’t want to.