He didn’t want to trade Dort but the ownership told him they need to save money. He traded James Harden 14 years ago because they couldn’t afford to be in the luxury tax.

I think he’s been told by ownership they’re willing to pay some luxury tax down the line and this is him going on the public record.

The meaning is clear in my mind, he is warning the ownership between the lines.

This is argumentable, to trade Dort to save 80 million, the team is still very good and they have young players in Cason and Ajay that wants more minutes.

It is next year ownership has to prove themself. If OKC is NOT in the second apron next year, AKA, paying a way higher lux tax than this year, then it is clear that they are not interested in paying up to keep a true contender and takes the road Denver took.

next year Cason and Shai will add 20 million each to their earnings if the Cason extension goes as planned. So even by shedding the back end with Kenrich and Topic to make room for a few rookies, they will still be like 25 million into the second apron and pay close to 200M in lux tax.
If they do not that, we know they are not serious people.

Yeah I noticed that too

Also his “as I understand it” comment leads me to believe most teams are figuring this all out on the fly

@dort - nothing personnel kid

@fans - don’t blame me

@ownership - 🙄

If I Did It.

If ownership undercuts him he wants everyone to be clear it isn’t his fault so it doesn’t go on his reputation, basically. The way the Harden trade has, although honestly making a trade there was very justifiable, it’s the extremely shit return they got (as well as choosing Harden specifically to salary dump) that he gets flack for. 

Ownership probably isn’t thrilled by the GM making them the bad guy but he has the job security to do that. 

It means, According to my boss…

And knowing Presti he knows this stuff and wouldn’t have to express degrees of certainty. I think it’s a case of having been given one impression by ownership at one point and then later on ownership reversing themselves, and now he’s not sure how consistent they’ll be with the premise to follow through on higher spending in the future.

I view it as it is him making it clear to the players that these are moves well outside of his control. I’m certain that Presti really loved having Dort, as he is the first major role player that really bought into what the Thunder could be and helped to mold their current culture. If the owners are even half as smart as Presti, they should have advised him to make it clear that it wasn’t his decision.

Owners that aren’t highly thought of are a dime a dozen in the league. Why not sacrifice some of that political capital that already isn’t very valuable (for example, there’s nothing they can do to make Sonics fans happy) to preserve the political capital of your very highly valued gm? It would be different if the owners didn’t have much to gain from propping Presti up in that way, but they clearly do here imo.

CYA prime. He did it right. 

He isn’t ownership. He doesn’t write the checks.

He’s not saying he was guaranteed, leaving all options open for ownership

Another way to look at it is he’s not sure if this way of NBA accounting will stick around forever.

So while in theory it saves them money, maybe the rules change next year.

I think he’s just referring to the construction progress of their upcoming stadium, and the projected revenue increase from that feeding into their roster budget. I doubt any GM wants to publicly throw the ownership under the bus.

The CBA can be opted out of in 2029 and may change some of the penalties/future aprons to where you may not be punished. I feel like the NBA Players Association will opt out because of what aprons have done to the players.

he is trying to say “don’t change the rules now that i have traded away assets”.

Lol this is exactly how I word things when passing along something management has said they’ll do but I know there’s a good chance they won’t

Means it wasn’t his decision

Just ask tom brady he took below market and the pats were one of the lowest spenders

Of course he got reimbursed for all his tb12 shit but his teammates sure didn’t get improved

Exactly how I read it too

Yes you can never trust a stolen team.

This sounds more to me that he is referring to a cap expert within his front office, not about ownership. Lots of front offices have an expert because the rules are so complicated, especially with the new CBA.

Why doesn’t he just say that “ownership told me”, rather than him working to read between the lines in what they’re saying? It’s so weird and unnecessary.

Look up the owner in Portland. That’s pretty embarrassing

I mean. Dort, Joe, Wiggins are not worth spending an additional $200mil penalty tax for, so I get it. Even if the owners are rich, you wouldn’t be able to fathom spending a 1/5th of a billion dollars in penalty tax. 20 MLB teams spend less than that for a full roster.

the opposite would be that we have a lopsided league with 5 teams overspending all the other teams like we see in so many other sports. and those 5 teams play for the championship because they have more resources.

i get the criticism for cheap owners in baseball like the athletics just pay a small portion what other teams do, but not for teams who dont want to be the top spenders of the league.

the cap is there for a reason. having teams go over it, shouldnt be the right decision and giving you a significant advantage over others. But if it does, it needs to come with a heavy risky price.

Been the narrative for decades. Even the 90s Bulls had the shadow of Reinsdorf hanging over them. This is a constant in the NBA (actually - all of pro sports tbh)

The revenue split between the players and owners is set out in the CBA. Owners wanting to avoid the second apron has absolutely no bearing on that, so they aren’t “being cheap” and that narrative only exists for people who don’t understand how the CBA is structured.

The aprons and the minimum spending requirements are just ensuring that there is less of a gap between how much teams spend and will result in even more parity in the league long term.

The 2nd apron is acting pretty close to a salary cap

Also shows it wasn’t personal to Dort.

I mean, what’s he supposed to say? ‘Yeah, Dort has been a great player for us, but when someone offers you 3 second round picks, you have to take it!’

This type of candor will be commonplace in the near future.

It seems like few contending teams are able to make it through an offseason without having to make a non-basketball decision under the second apron.

I like GMs being honest about the realities of dealing with the 2nd apron. Hopefully it’ll help lead to something more workable in the next CBA.

>He’s probably the only GM with the clout to be able to be so candid.

I can think of a guy,

Well he traded harden because the thunder couldn’t afford to be in the tax

Not about the tax so much but a number of GMs have been explicit about making trades to duck the 2nd apron.

Yeah what’s even more surprising is him essentially saying they will go into 2nd apron going down the line. 

It’s one thing to say you’re owners are trying to save money now, another thing entirely to say what they will do with that money being saved.

Doubt all three of those guys get extended. It’ll likely be Cason + Ajay. Maybe you swap one of those guys for McCain, if they demand way too much money.

Cason + Ajay alone are likely to get at least $50 Million between them.

They are already in the tax. But well said, aside from that. They don’t want to pay as much tax now because they’ll have to soon for these guards’ extensions.

Meanwhile they’ll keep drafting players and see who hits, which would allow them to play guys like Stirtz on a rookie deal and trade McCain or Mitchell for a ton of assets.

Hate to break it to ya but if the Blazers actually end up moving were not getting an expansion money anytime soon.

Sure, but they serve different purposes as players. Lu is stocky like more of a 3 or a 4, except he’s not 6’8. There’s certain forwards and bigger guys I’d rather him guard than Cason or Caruso

I feel like the only guy who thinks Dort was straight up overpaid lol

This.

Plus outright Dort looked bad last year and was useless in many big games (see SA series).

The fact Presti used the option to get some assets rather than just saying bye was smart. Maybe Dort rebounds a little bit, but he’s still largely completely useless on offense and if he can’t be a key defensive presence then he’s pointless to any good contender.

What some people should realize is this. Instead you have everyone making wild assumptions to just try and say thunder are cheap and won’t ever pay. Every player we have coming up to get paid is infinitely more valuable and worth it to break the apron than Lu. Yeah he was there forever but he provided no offense anymore.

I’m sure that’s what he’s referring to obliquely: that eating $100M in tax to keep Lu for one year makes it much more difficult to pay the tax hit to keep Cason next year and beyond. I’ve already accepted that Ajay is going to outplay his ability to stay with the Thunder long term.

I agree with this but I’m admittedly very biased

This would just make tanking even better than it already is which is the opposite of what the league wants.

If so, I would want it more to apply to late draftees and undrafted guys developed by a team than just an extra bonus for tanking and having the lottery luck to be handed a Wemby or an Ant with a top pick. 

Maybe for drafted players/undrafted signings (so no trades or free agent signings), do something like only count 75% of their salary toward the penalty.

So someone might be getting paid 40M annually, but only count it as 30M when calculating how much salary they have on the books when looking to see if they exceed the apron

It would also need to have a good 5+ year notice before it kicks in, as it would drastically change the value of draft picks and teams need time to adjust their plans that are already in motion. 

While many would agree with you that the 2nd apron penalties are severe. It is also true that throughout the history of the NBA you need two all-NBA players to be the average contender.

Boston breaking up the proven duo of Brown and Tatum for tax concerns will not make sense even in retrospect. The Thunder moving off of Dort for “tax reasons” still feels like an admittance that there are better guys on their bench that will probably grow into better players than concerns about a Dort extension. 

Those restrictions aren’t as severe as you think they are, especially for a team like OKC who doesn’t need to add any more talent. They just need to retain their talent. 

The biggest downside is the pic being frozen if you’re in it for multiple years so it makes total sense why OKC got out of the second apron but a team like the Knicks using the second apron as an excuse for not resigning Mitch does not make sense because they’re precisely the team that should go in it for a year or two to maximize your championship window

The last part is the worst punishment for me, so many things can happen after 7 years. If you go all in and failed. You can’t even rebuild immediately. 

Most of that stuff means nothing to OKC. They dumped guys to save tax money

Eh, I still hold the opinion that Dort is one of the best defenders in the league when it comes to defending perimeter scoring guards. He’s fantastic against guys like Curry, Brunson, Young, etc. And he will make guys like Luka or Harden really work for their shots.

On the flip side, he’s an issue when we run into teams with size (@Spurs). He loses so much of his defensive game and his offensive game can’t make up for it.

He’s incredibly matchup dependent.

They’re still pretty deep in the tax

Eeh, I mean I think the tax payment will be around, what, 20 mil now? That’s like 2 mil more than what the Magic project to pay this season.

Trading Dort because of the tax brackets saved like 80 mil in taxes.

This trade was always going to happen, the shockers for me were the other trades, especially Wiggins, cause I thought we’d trade on of the first rounders for a future pick, and get rid of Kenrich+Topic along with Dort.

It’s just that at one point you have to be in sync with your coach. Coach D didn’t play Joe and Wiggins in the playoffs and he reduced Dort’s minutes. Having depth is nice for the regular season but come playoff time having guys on average salaries not getting minutes is an easy financial decision to make when it comes to constructing a team.

The real earthquake will happen next summer, but this roster will contend this year again, which will be the third year in a row(four if you count the surprise first seed in 24). Under these rules, that’s really all you can ask for from a team.

Will we see a contending team after next summer? I have my doubts, but we’ll see.

I think it also has a lot to do with the fact the 2nd apron comes with heavier penalties the longer you’re in it. Keeping them under it this year will allow OKC to avoid the worst penalties all the way up until the next CBA negotiations, which may end up benefiting them considering the growing sentiment for teams to be able to keep their rosters together.

Doing it with this timing means they’ll be the best contenders for up to potentially another decade, if not longer given how well they’re run.

They’re also not going to really hurt for attracting talent considering that since OKC began as a franchise:

• At least one MVP (Current or Former) on the roster every season.

• More MVP awards than any other franchise.

• More players to win MVP than any other franchise.

• The most 1st team All-NBA selections.

The $20m salary bump for SGA next season is going to be so rough for them. At the same time they need to pay Wallace too.

How so? The tax rates increase a lot but not specifically at the apron. Just below and above. And this is about the tax.