Would be sick to watch them destroy a powerhouse as the 6th seed and have ad sit out the next series

KAT as 1st option with AD in street clothes would be a disaster.

This woulda been unanimous first team all-spooky in ²⁰¹⁷⁄₁₈ lol

Man that would be such a fun duo to watch in their prime, would be such a fun big man duo.

Would that work though? It didn’t work with the Pelicans (with Cousins)

as long as you have replacement level dudes around them and mr. glass bones stays alive that’s low key scary

AD/Cousins 2.0

Unless you put the tree on a big scoreboard?

Theres always money in the banana tree stand

….that’s just the way I feel?

AD: Where those trees? I’ll fucking plant them…for the right price.

Ya, cottons more of a shrub.

These jokes getting old. You guys need to aspire to find some new ones

For one year? No.

After a couple their picks become untradable and they’ll automatically pick 32nd (assuming two teams join) after a few years

You can’t spend your way into the 2nd apron by signing free agents. The only way to get there is by re-signing players with bird rights. Given the Clippers current contracts there is really no way to get there unless they just stupidly overpay their current roster and there is no benefit in doing that.

Buy this ticket, there’s a 30% chance you’ll see Anthony Davis play!

Would still be better off sucking and taking on base contracts for plagers/picks.

Still doesn’t make sense

Which is why it doesn’t make sense.

They have no picks to trade and no good players to trade.

Why would Washington want to trade with them?

I mean in free agency.

I hope so. Bryson’s made some good, logical decisions so far and we’ll see if they pay off. At least he’s taken a clear direction. Hopefully Jerry/Michael don’t meddle just because they want to force something.

Moreover, as much as people like the meme more than think critically PG was coming off of back to back All Stars and wasn’t necessarily going to be a cheap option regardless. The list of guys still pulling in accolades that don’t get paid handsomely in the league is slim.

He hasn’t performed in since 24 when he signed, but he showed glimpses of that All Star form end of last year. I think there’s a decent shot of a return to form with the Celtics even if he gets meme’d the entire time

Fox has literally made an AS team and the finals in the only season since the extension. Yes, he wasn’t fully worth the max during the playoffs but they don’t win 60 games or the WCF without him. People are comparing his stats to when he was shitting out 40-48 win seasons in Sacramento and losing in the 1st round as the best player, and acting like he fell off a cliff.

Everyone didn’t need time to “realize had bad it was,” you’re completely making things up. And AD looked great on Dallas. Talking out of your ass.

Maybe if he were to reach free agency, they would’ve. But they gave him the extension in 2024, 2 years before his earliest possible shot at free agency and coming off a season where played 39 games. If he were to actually hit free agency this offseason or the next after the subsequent stretch of missed games, no way in hell is anyone offering him a full max.

See this is a GM talking himself into giving AD 60 million a year

Yeah and his contract and age make sense with the wizards team. Tbh the only way it REALY blows up on the wizards is if they become competitive faster then expected and Trae is a liability, and tbh in that world I thirnknthey are fine with the outcome lmao

Trae Young was traded for salary filler.

wtf

Yep. The plan with Trae is to just have him be the brains of the offense for the next few years.

Kind of how Minnesota wanted to with Conley, but Conley aged out and it all fell on Ant/Randle.

I think the best version of Trae could be a modern day Steve Nash (minus the MVP narratives) - great regular season offense, decent playoff runs

Nobody else was giving 28 year old Trae Young that contract.

I really have to side eye that move. They were smart and sober for two whole years (!), got their stadium funded then yeeted their salary space AGAIN. After being roasted, pilloried and fricasseed for that EXACT THING for a decade plus!?

Are there really no financial shenanigans going on? Because that’s just very sketch, sus and trumpy looking.

Trae got severely underrated because of the narrative against smaller guards. Brunson then won a chip so that flipped. It honestly would not surprise me if the Wizards went on a bit of a run, and finished ahead of Atlanta.

My goodness if Trae’s wizards knock off the Sixers and then the Knicks, that would be the funniest thing.

IMO teams should focus on finding value ( some max’es are fantastic value some are horrible) rather than spending money on floor raisers just cuz they can

Tray can be new DeRozan

They would trade matching salary. They also have a bunch of money coming of f the books soon

Memphis didn’t just draft Cam Boozer so they could trade for an extremely expensive, fragile malcontent that prefers to play Boozer’s position and whines via his agent if he has to play center

Sets the floor

Reddit thinks players should start at a reasonable contract number. That’s a horrible business strategy

Ya and being one of the only guys who can match up with Wemby is a pretty big selling point.

And if “if’s” and “but’s” were candies and nuts, then everyone would have a merry Christmas.

I’m saying they could strong arm a team to give a washed 33 year old AD a max contract if that team had LeBron in their prime.

The point being that this was Rich Paul’s main leverage and he no longer has it.

Yes AD with zero injury history is getting that max from the wiz easy. Actually no, he’s not because Mavs would have either never traded him or traded him for a haul and wiz wouldn’t have been a place AD and Rich agreed to.

AD with zero injuries would not be on 4th team.

He’d still be a 33 year old big with lot more mileage on his body.

Imagine telling Dundon he can save $0.938M every game he DNPs Ja and Jrue.

It does allow for injury protection, like with Embiid’s deal. AD’s only hope at a huge deal is accepting these conditions.

False, there are non guaranteed and partial guarantees. This specific framing wouldn’t work. They could try having games played clauses but I think that would only effect the following years guaranteed money

They may not offer him the max, but that doesn’t mean they won’t find a way to get him more money than what they initially offered. That’s how negotiations work and the players have the leverage.

Honestly, if he got a haul, he wouldn’t have been a laughing stock. The other side of the trade being AD ABSOLUTELY made him look like a complete clown.

Who could have possibly known the most likely outcome was the actual outcome?

Brad could only wish to be as good as Trae.

I absolutely wouldn’t give him the super max right now. He has less than one year of super max level play. Even if he didn’t get injured he would have needed to do it again to prove it wasn’t a fluke.

differnet levels of supermax.

He is ‘only’ making 48 millino

Tbf he had one super max worthy season and then tore his Achilles. I have faith he’ll recover and rebound but it is a risk at this point.

Haliburton is an injury away from being a FMVP.

Gottem.

I don’t think he was even before the Achilles injury, just that a team like the Pacers have no choice but to do it.

So in couple years it’s AD for J-Dub?

Doesn’t change the fact that he got the contract.

Hindsight is ²⁰⁄₂₀.

Play AD 10-15 minutes every other game till the playoffs as a PF beside Bam or Giannis. Too bad we cant make salaries work at all lol

I mean you roster AD for the playoffs, where he has never missed a game and plays through injuries.

The players as a group get the same amount its just about how its distributed within that group. AD and his agent are delusional thinking theyll that get that large a contract and its not some 1% vs the 99% thing. Its literally just less money going to role players cause some team would be stuck with that ablatross contract

Players still get half the revenue. It just goes to different players.

That money will still be spend on players though. It’ll just be spread between more players. Owners don’t get to keep salary cap not spent.

There’s tons of support staff being exploited with awful wages, I’d rather see some of it go to them. Distributing more to the fringe players is good with me too.

The league generates a ridiculous amount of money - where should that money go? To owners or players?

There’s tens of thousands of employees behind the scenes that keep everything running, and they get paid shit.

Hell, the League could use some of that money to pay for their own damn stadiums instead of forcing taxpayers to subsidize them.

I want it to go to players in the middle or at the bottom. Caruso gets 4 for 81 and AD gets 4 for 275? Rather AD get 4 for 220 and Caruso 4 for 136. For how much they play and what they provide, they’re maybe closer to 15-20M apart per year instead of 35-40m apart. Beef up them middle boys instead of giving it to the top.

If we have to be honest here, that money should go back to the average person in the form of higher taxes. People don’t need to be making hundreds of millions / billions. It’s no coincidence that standard of living has been cratering globally and yet there’s more billionaires than ever

The players gets 57 or 58% (I forget which) of revenue no matter what, no ifs ands or buts about it. AD getting that extra 35 million comes directly from other players.

Yea but AD taking 70 means the rest of the team gets less. It doesn’t just go to the owners. It’s taken from the middling and lower tier players.

I mean, salary cap rules exist, billionaires suck, but under new salary cap rules, paying players what they are worth punishes the team more. There were a few owners fine (like the Warriors) into paying the luxury tax to keep a team competitive before now it’s a bit different when you get into a 2nd apron. Plus owners have to spend a minimum amount anyway, so they really aren’t saving money like that through the cap rules unless they avoid the luxury tax.

But besides that, now nba teams have incentives to not just hand out max contracts willy nilly besides “cheap owner” excuse. Teams lose flexibility in trades, get your first round pick taken back to the first round, lose the ability to use your mle to sign players etc. it complicated things for players because teams building around these rules shouldn’t pay players more than their value or else it destroys their ability to build a good team, which is more than just a rich owner issue.

That money is always guaranteed to go to the players, so you don’t have to worry about that at all

Back to the fans via reduced pricing

The people who make it all possible- thousands of stadium staff, supporting staff, and the schools & athletic programs that train these kids from age 6. Support the support and farm system.

where should that money go? To owners or players?

This is completely wrong headed. Players get 51 % of basketball related income, come rain, shine or 2nd apron. It is just a question of which players get paid

(caveat: 51 % bri with 0-10% escrow)

That money should go to the players who actually play basketball and not dudes who are injured for 30-60% of the season every year.

It goes to other non broken 50% of the time players

The money should go to the fans and the cities that give them hundreds of millions to build their stadiums. But neither the owners or players want to see that happen so it won’t.

Why can’t that money be spread out to other players though? Why does it have to go to a big name star who struggles to get the court for more than half the season?

Like, the construct of having 2 players taking up 30-35% each, and then another guy or two taking up 10%+ each isn’t going to work anymore outside of a 1 or maybe 2 year window, especially if those guys show they can’t play a full season + playoffs.

At least someone like Steph generates a ton of revenue for GSW. Is AD going to generate that kind of revenue for WAS?

the top guys are already capped. they should be making even more if it wasn’t for that, which is pretty crazy

Eh there’s clearly some players that deserve more than others but for sure the gap doesn’t need to be 70M vs 2M. More like 50 vs 10.

yeah but its a super star league, that is not incentive to be better, specially when some guy plays 10min, other even 5min,

Not really owner’s fault there. People are just willing to pay that much. If they weren’t things would be cheaper.

I think it is slowly happening. No way is Jaylen Brown traded in years past. And while I know there are some dumb teams (My Kings for example) I just do not see AD getting this. Honestly he probably still gets something very high like 50/year and that will be awful by the end of year 1.

The NBA will always need players. The players as a group are getting 50% revenue and paying $0 in expenses.

An individual player joining the NBPA makes a $0 investment into the NBAPA or NBA and receives the revenues of the league. They do pay a percentage as dues to the association.

When they retire they’re eligible for ongoing benefits such as pensions/insurance. Former players have seen significant increases with new CBA negotiations as a benefit from current revenue growth.

With the caveat that ~half of player pay is lost to taxes and fees while owners all pay virtually none.

What do you mean virtually none? Owners are paying payroll taxes for every player and non-player employee they have. They’re paying sales taxes on purchases. They owe income taxes on team profits. They’ll have capital gains taxes on selling the team for a profit.

I’d rather pay the ticket takers and burger flippers and own the team along with a multi-billion dollar stadium.

Ok? Most teams don’t even own their stadiums, but yeah being an NBA owner would be awesome. So would being an NBA player, IMO.

half of player pay is lost to taxes and fees while owners all pay virtually none.

I’m not arguing that it’s not bullshit that these guys don’t pay taxes. But the ⁵⁰⁄₅₀ split is revenue before expenses, and all the league expenses are taken out of the owners’ half.

The owner doesn’t pocket the other 50%, you know that right?

i think my comment was misunderstood, the players get half of the revenue, isnt that a fair deal then what is it? they want more? i mean they can try

“We’ll see you in Valhalla”

-only $70M offer he’s getting

I think it’s more he is willing to play for the Wizards at that absurd number, but if he has to be on a deal in line with his play, he would like to do it elsewhere.

I just think he wants out of Washington, no way they actually believe he is getting 70m per.

Does AD come with the whiteboard?  They could use it as a stretcher.

No way Balmer talked through contingency plans for top players before hiring him.

I say 35M is still a good gamble for teams that are sort of do-or-die granted they have 2 max player stars already. Say something like the Celtics idk

For sure and I don’t think he’l get the full 270. But to think he’d give up 65 x 1 to sign 20-30 x 4 is just wild to me.

Klutch sports is known for discretion.