he aint wrong tbh some middle guys do scarfrice some pay

Yeah the aprons didn’t seem to hurt the tier 2 players at all. Trae, Donovan and Austin got huge bags. The roleplayers are left fighting for slices of the MLE.

Asking this question is the locker room is diabolical lmao

Very rarely do you hear an Active Pro talk so candidly about a CBA.

I bet he gets a letter from the NBPA in his locker by Monday morning.

The NBPA is lucky previous union leaders negotiated a fixed revenue split because if that didn’t exist they would’ve been truly fucked

Even in the NBA economy the middle class is disappearing smh

Bruce Brown wasn’t complaining about the CBA when the Pacers gave him $45m for 2 years just so they could hit the salary floor

CJ McCollum probably avoids all players association gatherings these days.

Any kind of salary cap is not “good for max guys.” Guys like LeBron and Steph could have made way more money in a system without a cap.

Gotta lower the max (rookie contracts too) and raise vet min

This is where players just don’t know what they’re talking about. No team is declining to give out the full midlevel because of the 2A. Using the full MLE hardcaps you at the first apron. Teams aren’t using the midlevel because either

they’re too expensive due to extending their own players. ORL, NOP, GSW, SAC, TOR

they already have plenty of guys on roster, or they use their MLE as a trade exception MEM, CHA, POR, WAS

The only situation where you could say the 2nd apron cost a midlevel guy some money was New York. No second apron, they re-sign Mitchell Robinson, BOS uses their MLE on someone else.

How many guys actually should’ve gotten the full midlevel this offseason and didn’t? Jordan Goodwin, Colin Gillespie, and Landry Shamet were worth that much to me, but they all chose to come back to their previous teams, presumably for less. I think Spencer Jones was worth an offer sheet at the full midlevel, but teams just don’t really do that. I would’ve paid DeAnthony Melton or Marcus Smart the full midlevel for one or two years, but both are health risks and seemingly prioritized familiar destinations. Kelly Oubre and Dean Wade are probably worth \(10-11 million instead of the \)8 mil they signed for, but not the full $15 million.

Good. If I’m not mistaken the Lakers will have that next summer

Cap as a stand alone isnt good for players

But the floor that comes with it is

Otherwise you end up like the MLB with teams with a total payroll equal to 1 dude’s salary

If you’re fighting for the 14th spot on a roster you aren’t a ‘middle guy’

The full MLE this year is 15.04m and the 25% max is 41.24m. There are 83 players making at least the full MLE and less than 25% of the salary cap. That’s almost 3 players per team making that. And then there’s another 55 players making between 10m and less than the full MLE. That’s almost 5 players per team making at least 10m and less than the lowest max, which is about ¹⁄₃ of the league. Sure seems like there’s a lot of players making that middle salary.

It doesn’t matter how many times a podcaster talks about it, I’ll never accept that there’s a valid reason why second apron exists

The rich get richer even for the rich. Trying being a normal person fighting for 150k a year.

Hard to feel bad for these dudes when nurses make like 70k and they still make millions a year to play basketball.

Dude has made 60 million dollars in his career

I’m just a average pro in the league and it’s hard for me to maximize getting paid as much as possible for being an average professional athlete.

The second apron has led to parity and there being no repeat champion since the 2017 and 2018 Warriors

New York right is facing the exact same dilemna , they are going to lose potentially both KAT and Hart

San Antonio is eating good , considering all their best players are rookie contracts and they need to strike

The average NBA team is \(35M over the cap this season, up from \)26M before this CBA began.

Teams are spending more. It’s just not being distributed to guys who are washed up like Bowen. But more money is being spent than ever before, even after accounting for inflation.

Average* employee finds out the company may higher a less experienced replacement to save money. More breaking news at 6.

*I say average but they’re the best basketball players in the world. Just average by NBA standards.

Isn’t every team still using their mid level exceptions? Problem for Brown is he isn’t that caliber of player now. The drop off has been swift

Welcome to the present day economy

But hey! you can smoke weed now

It doesn’t really kind of suck for the middle guys. They aren’t worth that much because they aren’t that impactful. They still make a lot.

$63,326,647 in career earnings btw

He on the bottom

He’s making $3.5 million this year……

Bruce wants to go back to the middle guys getting overpaid again.

I’ll take it. The Knicks got one because of it. We might lose KAT but we only got KAT bc Minnesota had to make a tough financial decision around said apron.

Critiquing the cap while looking suave in that hat

One thing I would change is homegrown drafted stars need some apron subsidies. You should be heavily incentiviced to keep players you drafted and developed. One of the stupidest things is that a guy can have contract bonuses like all NBA team and that extra money can cripple you. I think bonuses like that on homegrown guys should not count against the cap or apron. They just get the money and team doesn’t get punished for that player achieving something special.

This has been a problem for decades, it’s not just since the new CBA. Once they started putting in categories for different players with different pay scales, older players started to get screwed. By making pay seniority based, teams stopped filling the end of their benches with old vets and started filling them with cheap young players so they could spend more on superstars.

This is coming from a guy who got his money from the Pacers and was way overpaid and was traded as a negative asset.

For every player that’s ‘underpaid’ there’s another who’s overpaid. And it happens on every team, so I can understand the hesitancy for GMs to give out big contracts.

So what would Bruce’s reaction had been if he’d been overpaid? Probably wouldn’t give a damn about the 2nd apron.

The only way to have fewer of these small contracts would also need to function in the inverse manner and result in fewer overpaid contracts. And the players are never going to want to limit those because they all have big egos and think they can get a big contract.

Oh, and outside that playoff series that got him on the radar, he has never been that good. He’s the sort of guy who really is a fringe NBA player.

The super max also affects this; since before the max was less overall % compared to a Supermax and then there was more money for mid level guys.

Granted some teams had 2-3 max players and Cheaped on the rest, but many had 1-2 max players and then a few mid level guys then filled out the roster.

It was def better for middle players before, the Supermax essentially takes that mid level money for the star.

Bruce Brown talking about the mid level? You’re not that guy (anymore), pal

I keep seeing this being repeated and I just wanted to point out; the second apron doesn’t cap how much players can make any differently than before, it just makes them have to choose between continuity and money.

Under the old rules, a team like the Warriors might have broken up a bit earlier, but Durant would never have been able to sign there, which is a fair trade off.

It’s not perfect, and it sucks when a genuinely well crafted team has to breakup because the players are too expensive, but that’s no different than what happens in other careers with upwards mobility. You either are content with where your are or if you want what your worth on the open market you gotta be willing to relocate.

Can someone give an example of a player that got a new contract and it would’ve been higher 10 years ago (adjusted for salary cap total). Like it seems like teams are just getting smarter about not throwing big salaries out to one dimensional scorers like cam Thomas. Good role players still make $30m

People blame the 2nd apron for everything. An MLE doesn’t really get affected by the 2nd apron. You get hardcapped at the 1st apron for using half or more of the MLE. Teams using the MLE have to make sure they have room under the 1st apron to sign that player. And for the record Bruce brown isn’t an MLE guy anymore. Hell he might not even be a vet min guy anymore

Guy who dogged it in Toronto is upset about how hard it is to make his millions now? He’s not wrong but also, fuck this guy.

[removed]

Just a reminder to say fuck CJ McCollum for being one of the reasons this happened. He was a terrible president for the players union. No Ring having ass.

Americas declining middle class applies to the NBA too

Yeah this CBA sucks for players and fans.

The new CBA increased the mid level from around 8.5% to 9.12% of the cap. The change to allow 35% supermax contracts was introduced in 2017, not 2023. The new CBA also created a separate exception for second round picks, so they can be paid after mid-level player contracts get resolved. It anything, this CBA has increased money to mid-level players.

In a star driven league shouldn’t the top talent get the highest cap allocation? The middle class players are not impoverished. They just aren’t getting overpaid

Bruce brown your just not that good. Payton prichards making 7mil. Bruce is a Vet D and hustle guy now. He was 3&d at denver several years ago but he hasn’t shot with a decent efficiency

The new CBA negotiations are definitely going to have to revise the cap situation and aprons. Teams dont want to be penalized like they have been while players want to get the contracts they want. It definitely needs to be more than just fines but less than hard roster flexibility limitations.

Players got whooped in the last CBA, thanks to CJ and co. While it may suck for them, it’s worse for fans, so thanks for that.