Latest news with #superteams
Yahoo
05-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Warriors' Draymond Green says ‘PA made a sh– deal', torches second apron
The post Warriors' Draymond Green says 'PA made a sh– deal', torches second apron appeared first on ClutchPoints. Draymond Green didn't hold back when dissecting what he believes is the death of NBA superteams. With the Boston Celtics trading away both Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis just weeks after hoisting the 2024 NBA title, Green zeroed in on what he sees as the culprit: the league's second apron, Boston reports. Advertisement 'This is all about the second apron,' Green said bluntly on The Draymond Green Show alongside Baron Davis. 'People said they didn't want super teams anymore, well here you have it.' The Celtics dumped salary, not talent. Both Holiday and Porzingis were instrumental in Boston's championship run, but the trades weren't made for basketball reasons. They were about dodging the steep penalties tied to crossing the NBA's newly enforced second luxury tax apron. That threshold, now set at $207.824 million for the 2025-26 season, essentially acts as a hard cap. And owners, according to Green, want no part of it. 'The penalties are crazy,' Green emphasized, pointing out how the second apron strips away team-building flexibility, from signing buyout players to using trade exceptions. 'No owner is dealing with that.' Advertisement Green blames NBPA, predicts more broken-up contenders While Green understands the business side, his real frustration lies with how the players' union handled negotiations. In his eyes, the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) dropped the ball. 'The PA made a sh– deal, as the PA has done for years now,' Draymond Green vented. 'Every year, the pot gets bigger and the business gets better, and the players get screwed more.' His comments came just hours after the NBA released new cap figures. The 2025-26 salary cap will rise to $154.647 million, with a first apron of $195.945 million and a second apron of $207.824 million. Although the league projected a 10 percent cap increase, the extra breathing room doesn't solve the apron problem. Advertisement Few teams even have the room to make splashy moves. ESPN's Bobby Marks reported the Brooklyn Nets as the only franchise projected to have more than $20 million in space this summer. That leaves most contenders, including those already flirting with or above the apron, looking to cut costs instead of adding talent. Belief that trend will only grow. 'You'll see this all over the NBA for years to come,' he said. 'That's just the way this CBA works.' Davis agreed, warning that the era of five-year title windows for core rosters might be over. 'It's going to be more broken up teams,' he said, 'than the ones you grew up watching.' Advertisement The Golden State forward, a four-time champion himself, knows dynasties don't come easy. But if this second apron climate continues, they may become nearly impossible. Related: WWE star Jey Uso hilariously botches Cody Rhodes' birthday celebration Related: Rockets' Kevin Durant minds the game, brilliantly explains mid-range jumpers
New York Times
02-07-2025
- Business
- New York Times
NBA free agency is all but dead as July fireworks have been reduced to soft jazz
Free agency is all but dead in the NBA. With one powerful collective bargaining agreement and a few years spent slowly creeping in this direction, the league has successfully managed to choke out what once was the most exciting time of the year. There's still an occasional tremor, but the booming fireworks that once illuminated the NBA sky during the first few days of July have been replaced by soft jazz and a sterile waiting room, anxiously anticipating the next big move that may not come. Advertisement Much of this is by design. There has been a noticeable shift in trying to move away from transactions season and returning the focus to the play on the court. The league's current CBA, meanwhile, incentivizes its stars to remain with their current teams, and a general lack of cap space around the league has suppressed movement. Add it together and the death of the super teams has been accompanied by the death of the super summer season. The only team that entered this summer with a max contract slot was the Brooklyn Nets. Juxtapose that against 2019, for example, when teams across the league worked feverishly to create cap space and at least 10 teams entered that free agent season capable of offering a max contract. It's no coincidence that summer was also one of the most explosive in league history: Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving teamed up in Brooklyn, Kawhi Leonard and Paul George landed with the Los Angeles Clippers, Anthony Davis was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers and Jimmy Butler went to the Miami Heat. Some of those were trades, some were free-agent signings. All were completed within the first few days of July. In hindsight, that might have been the summer that broke the old way of doing business. The pandemic ensued, costing teams millions in lost revenue over multiple seasons, and eventually, the most restrictive CBA in league history was enacted. "Free agency is dead. It's bad for the league because it's usually one of the league's biggest attractions. We have to remember that this is entertainment and we can't take that away" -An NBA Exec to Chris Haynes — Ahmed/The Ears/IG: BigBizTheGod 🇸🇴 (@big_business_) June 30, 2025 Not all of this is necessarily bad, but it's certainly noticeable. If Adam Silver's goal was wrestling control away from the players and restoring it with the owners, he certainly seems to have accomplished it. The biggest move this week has been Myles Turner spurning the Indiana Pacers for the Milwaukee Bucks — and Turner has never even made an All-Star team. Advertisement (As a side note: To create the space necessary to sign Turner, the Bucks had to waive Damian Lillard and swallow the remaining $113 million on his deal — the most dead cap money in league history. There is no clearer sign of Jimmy Haslam's influence on the Bucks than this transaction. Haslam is the only one within the Bucks ownership group with the liquidity to make Lillard's contract disappear. He also knows plenty about historic dead cap hits after his experience with Deshaun Watson and the Cleveland Browns.) It's fair to point out that Kevin Durant was just dealt a couple of weeks ago and Giannis Antetokounmpo's future remains murky in Milwaukee despite the Turner signing. And nothing shook the NBA quite like the Luka Doncic trade in the middle of last season. Big moves are still possible, but rarely do they occur now in early July. Much of the Durant trade was forced by the second-apron constraints the Phoenix Suns foolishly flew into before their roster was ready. The Minnesota Timberwolves moved Karl Anthony-Towns over similar cap concerns. There will be more cap-forced moves in the future, but the players no longer seem to be driving their fate quite as furiously as they once did. The shift away from the July frenzy has been ongoing for a few years. The top names to change teams last year were DeMar DeRozan and an aging Klay Thompson, two guards much closer to the end of their careers than the beginning. Fred Van Vleet was the biggest prize among the 2023 free-agent class, and Jalen Brunson was the top star to change teams in 2022, long before he became JALEN BRUNSON with the New York Knicks. As the leverage plays continue to shift between the players and owners, the owners have clearly retaken control, at least for now. Soft jazz never sounded so boring this time of year. (Photo of Myles Turner: Emilee Chinn / Getty Images)
Yahoo
28-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How the NBA collective bargaining agreement is helping programs like Wisconsin
The Utah Jazz selected Wisconsin basketball wing John Tonje No. 53 overall in the 2025 NBA draft on Thursday. He joins Rutgers forward Ace Bailey and Florida guard Walter Clayton Jr. as the team's three draftees. If the NBA's current collective bargaining agreement, signed in 2023, hadn't existed, there's a decent chance Tonje would've gone undrafted. Here's why. In 2023, the NBA Players Association and the league agreed on a new collective bargaining agreement, which featured a brand new and impactful rule: the second apron. This new rule was designed to help combat the rising trend of 'superteams,' with the most successful example being the Golden State Warriors, who won titles with Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, and Klay Thompson all on one team. Advertisement The old CBA had a much softer salary cap than the new agreement, meaning that teams could go over the cap while only having to pay a small luxury tax as a penalty. That is different than other leagues, including the NFL, which has a hard salary cap and severe penalties for exceeding it. The new bargaining agreement and the 'second apron' rule aimed to limit the amount of money that franchises could spend on team-building. Some of those penalties include significant fines, teams not being able to trade first-round picks from seven years out and teams not being able to use cash in trades. Those are in addition to the numerous first-apron penalties as well. This idea sounds positive. However, it is having major consequences on the league. For example, many teams are so scared of exceeding the second apron that they are being forced to trade key rotation pieces or stars on their roster. The Boston Celtics were forced to trade both Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis, two key members of their 2024 championship team. This past Tuesday, Nuggets general manager Josh Kroenke floated the idea of trading multiple-time MVP Nikola Jokic if the team come too close to exceeding the second apron. Instead of stopping teams from overspending, it is having an inverse effect which is causing NBA franchises to penny pinch. The reason why this affects college stars like John Tonje is that NBA franchises are in dire need of inexpensive, pro-ready rotational players that can fill the gaps that were previously filled by expensive role players. Teams can only afford a couple of high-profile players before they exceed the second apron, so many NBA franchises are filling the gaps with collegiate stars like John Tonje, players who can come in and fill a bench role for a few years before reaching free agency. We've seen this trend with many different teams in the NBA including the Los Angeles Lakers, who drafted 23-year old Dalton Knecht in the first round last year, or the Memphis Grizzlies, who drafted Zach Edey with the ninth overall pick. Advertisement Players like John Tonje who played well in March Madness and have NBA tools are being giving more chances by franchises that are tiptoeing close to the second apron and are in need of cheap, low-risk and high-reward players. While there were a record number of freshman drafted in the 2025 NBA Draft, there was also a high number of senior and super seniors drafted, including Nique Clifford, Walter Clayton Jr, Johni Broome, Ryan Kalkbrenner, Chaz Lanier, Koby Brea, and Brooks Barnhizer. Very few of these players would've been drafted just a couple of years ago and even fewer would've been drafted in the first round like Clifford and Clayton. This shift will be a positive one for college basketball programs like the Wisconsin Badgers, who tend to produce a ton of upperclassmen NBA talent. Next year, it is possible that both juniors John Blackwell and Nolan Winter enter the NBA draft process and eventually get drafted. The second apron might not be the most beneficial to the leagues' franchises, but it will definitely benefit players like Tonje and programs like Wisconsin who thrive on collegiate development. Contact/Follow @TheBadgersWire on X (formerly Twitter) and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Wisconsin Badgers news, notes and opinion This article originally appeared on Badgers Wire: Why NBA CBA helps programs like Wisconsin, players like John Tonje
Wall Street Journal
05-06-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
The NBA Executive Who Can See the Future—and Built One of the Best Teams in History
The NBA is built for the Oklahoma City Thunder to lose. In a league historically dominated by glamour teams from big cities on both coasts, the Thunder make their home in the middle of flyover country. When the NBA's biggest stars decide where to play, they never choose one of the league's smallest markets—situated right in the middle of tornado alley. But this season, the Thunder are more than just the favorites to win the NBA championship. They have become one of the most dominant collections of talent ever to step on a basketball court. That's because the Thunder have one crucial advantage over the league's other 29 teams: an executive whose superpower just happens to be building superteams the hard way. For the entire time the team has been in Oklahoma City, general manager Sam Presti has been the mastermind behind the Thunder. In that time, he built a title contender and tore it down. Now he's built an even better team. And he's done it all with one hand tied behind his back. In the NBA, a marquee free agent can swing the fortunes of an entire team. But Oklahoma City has never been able to land a free agent who has made even a single All-Star team. Instead, Presti tends to acquire players by drafting or trading for them. Which means the Thunder depend on his ability to predict basketball's future by identifying the undervalued players who will become stars down the line. 'In order to be exceptional,' Presti says of the Thunder's strategy, 'you have to be willing to be an exception.' In nearly every player on the Thunder's roster, you can see Presti's predictive gifts at work. The Thunder traded for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander after a rookie season in which he barely averaged 10 points a game; he blossomed into the league's leading scorer and MVP. Presti nabbed another All-Star with a middle-of-the-pack draft pick, and built basketball's most fearsome defense around a 31-year-old journeyman who has never made a single All-Star team. 'All teams do great diligence,' said Bill Duffy, agent of the Thunder's Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren, who transformed quickly from Presti draft picks to ascendant stars. 'But with him it's a premium metric. It's the highest level.' The astonishing thing is that this year's Thunder—who walloped opponents by 12.9 points per game this season, the most dominant margin in NBA history—hardly mark the first time Presti has gazed into his crystal basketball. After a playing career at Emerson College, where he once took a team-record six charges in a game, Presti began his NBA career as an intern with the San Antonio Spurs in 2000. There, he helped convince the organization to draft Tony Parker—a little-known point guard from faraway France who would go on to win four championships and land in the Hall of Fame. 'If you knew Sam early, there was no question of how successful he would be,' said P.J. Carlesimo, an assistant coach with the Spurs at the time. 'He understood how all the parts of a team fit together.' The Seattle SuperSonics hired Presti away in 2007, making the then-29-year-old the second-youngest general manager in NBA history. In Seattle, and when the franchise moved to Oklahoma City a year later, Presti embarked on perhaps the greatest run of success the NBA draft has ever seen, selecting Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden in consecutive years in the late 2000s. None of those three was a No. 1 overall pick. All of them would go on to win league MVP. Part of Presti's ability to build a team comes from the fact that there is seemingly nothing in the world he can't become obsessed with—and draw a basketball lesson from. He cites the biographer Robert Caro as an inspiration for how to do the slow, painstaking work required to maximize a roster. And when Presti considers how players gel, he's as likely to think about '70s electronic music as he is the '70s Celtics. He once said that a basketball team doesn't evolve as rigidly as a song from the German band Kraftwerk. 'And I like Kraftwerk, to be clear,' Presti insisted. 'I think they're hugely, hugely important to modern music.' Presti doesn't claim to know exactly how his trades and picks will work out, but Thunder coach Mark Daigneault says that an optimistic outlook is a key ingredient of Presti's magic. 'If a player has strengths and flaws, he sees the best in them,' Daigneault said. 'He's not a skeptic. He sees them for what they can bring to a team.' Presti's glass-half-full outlook helped a few years ago, when he made perhaps the boldest gamble of his life. He had already built one NBA Finals team in Oklahoma City around Durant and Westbrook. They were still a solid playoff team with Westbrook after Durant left the Thunder in 2016. But Presti saw a future he didn't like: a team that was good but not truly great, stalled out just short of the promised land. So he traded Westbrook and co-star Paul George in exchange for an astonishing haul of draft picks: seven extra first-rounders over five years. Armed with a currency he can spend as well as anyone alive, he set about rebuilding the Thunder from the ground up. 'In saying goodbye to the past,' Presti wrote in an opinion piece in The Oklahoman explaining the moves, 'we have begun to chart our future.' That future has arrived with astonishing speed. Without the big-city appeal of the Lakers or Warriors, small-market teams can spend decades languishing in the NBA wilderness. But only six years after trading away the last of the Durant, Westbrook and Harden core, the Thunder are back in the Finals with a whole new cast of players. They're the heavy favorite to bring Oklahoma City its first championship, but the scariest thing about the Thunder for the rest of the NBA is that they might just be getting started. The core of this team is built to last, while Presti will have multiple first-round picks in each of the next two drafts. That means another star is almost certain to call Oklahoma City home. It's just that nobody knows who he is—not even Presti. Write to Robert O'Connell at
