Here are some of the events that happened during the first days of the 2024 NBA offseason:
- A nine-time All-Star has left a Western Conference contender for an Eastern Conference contender, where he will join forces with a recent MVP.
- One of the greatest shooters in history, a four-time NBA champion, has joined the reigning Western Conference champions, playing alongside one of the game’s brightest young stars.
- A top-tier 3-and-D winger who has won titles with two different teams in the last five seasons has joined one of the most promising young teams in the East.
- A rising Western Conference powerhouse, armed with two All-Stars but in dire need of playmakers, has acquired an All-Star point guard.
- The West’s youngest and most powerful team, coming off a breakthrough 57-win season, has added two accomplished veterans to bolster its title chances.
- The East runner-up added one of the league’s most versatile wingers.
- Oh, and six teams collaborated on a spectacular, dizzying trade of players and draft picks – the first such trade in NBA history.
- In total, more than $2 billion in new contracts were handed out over the past weekend, according to Jared Dubin, who writes about the league at Last Night, in Basketball. More than 50 players have changed teams so far via free agency or trades.
Here’s another thing that happened in the early days of the 2024 offseason:
- Fans moaned, pundits complained, and columnists kvetched about a new salary cap feature — the dreaded second apron (gasp) — out of fear that it would stifle the market, become a de facto hard cap and make roster building nearly impossible.
My friends, we may have just set an NBA record for cognitive dissonance.
There’s no denying that the second cap, which severely penalizes teams that spend more than $188.9 million in salary next season, has already had a profound impact. Without it, Paul George might still be a Clipper, Klay Thompson might still be a Warrior and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope might still be a Nugget. (“Maybe” being the operative word here. Some of these divorces might have happened regardless, due to the forces of age, ego and budgetary considerations.)
Teams that have just lost their stars or key players have every right to be upset. But if you judge the NBA each July by its fireworks, the league always puts on a pretty good show.
Paul George is now a 76er, giving Philadelphia a veteran All-Star to back up MVP Joel Embiid and rising star Tyrese Maxey. Four-time champion Klay Thompson is now a Maverick, giving Dallas a sharpshooter to keep defenses from getting in the way of Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving. Two-time champion Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is now in Orlando, giving the Magic a steady scorer/defender to complement Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner.
Dejounte Murray is now a Pelican, giving New Orleans the top-tier point guard it needed to get the most out of Zion Williamson and (for now) Brandon Ingram. DeMar DeRozan is now a King, giving Sacramento the veteran scorer it needed to complement De’Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis. Mikal Bridges is now a Knick, giving New York another solid two-way wing with roots at Villanova. The Thunder added a defensive ace (Alex Caruso) and a rebounding maestro (Isaiah Hartenstein) to round out their young core. The Spurs signed a Hall of Fame point guard (Chris Paul) to feed and mentor Victor Wembanyama.
These are not minor developments! And there is still plenty of time before the end of the season. There is still a chance to trade Lauri Markkanen. Or Darius Garland. Or Zach LaVine. Or Ingram. There is still time for the Nuggets to get some talent back. There is still time for the Lakers to do something.
It’s entirely possible that in the years to come, the second apron, which removes all sorts of tools for acquiring players, will have such deleterious effects that general managers will storm the Olympic Tower and demand revisions to the collective bargaining agreement. But don’t count on it.
Every major change to the NBA system over the past 40 years has sparked some degree of concern and panic, as well as predictions of a free agency apocalypse. But the initial salary cap didn’t kill the player movement in the 1980s, and neither did restricted free agency, the rookie ladder, the longer the beginner scale, the luxury tax or the harder Luxury Tax. There have been tighter markets and looser markets over time, but eventually the system finds a balance and the activity of adding and subtracting players continues.
Today’s team executives are resilient and creative people, backed by an army of savvy capologists who can adapt to whatever new rules the NBA’s lawyers can concoct. Witness the aforementioned six-team trade, a marvel of salary cap management that allowed all of those teams (the Mavericks, Timberwolves, Warriors, Nuggets, Hornets, and 76ers) to acquire the players they wanted while maximizing cap flexibility.
The lesson? Smart teams figure it out. The Thunder have built a core of affordable young talent over the years and left themselves enough wiggle room to add Caruso and Hartenstein this summer. The 76ers went old school, clearing the books of everyone but Embiid and Maxey so they could splurge on George, luring him from the Clippers on a four-year, $212 million deal (and making Philly the first team since 2019 to sign a max free agent).
And of course, the Celtics won the championship last month by surrounding stars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown with top-tier players on manageable contracts — a formula that should hold up under the new rules for now.
Will the second apron allow these teams—or, for that matter, the Knicks, Timberwolves, Cavaliers, and Pelicans—to retain their core players for the long haul? Will every title contender be forced to dismantle their rosters after three or four years? Or will elite teams find a way to retool on the fly, trading expensive players for cheaper (and perhaps less proven) replacements? Are dynasties already dead? All of these questions remain open.
But general managers behave a bit like players when faced with a new officiating situation: First they complain, then they adapt.
It’s true that the second apron is the closest thing to a fixed salary cap the league has ever seen, but it’s not, in fact, a true fixed salary cap, nor is it a death knell. “It’s not as powerful as some people make it out to be,” said one longtime team executive. It just requires more foresight and financial gymnastics.
Important reminder: The second apron only affects the league’s highest-spending teams, which is a few teams per year, historically speaking. In other words: 20+ teams per season would never have been affected by the new rules had they existed in the past. It’s also worth noting that the NBA’s salary cap is set to increase steadily by 10% per year once the league signs its new national broadcast deal, which will give even the highest-spending teams plenty of wiggle room going forward.
This is not to say that there was no real anguish or justified lamentation.
It really hurts to see the Warriors part ways with Thompson after all he meant to this franchise. It’s a shame the Clippers and George couldn’t work something out, considering the massive investment the team made to get him five years ago. And it’s sad to see the Nuggets, just a year after winning a title, lose another key piece of their championship team due to salary cap issues. Nikola Jokic is running out of friends to catch all those incredible passes.
The second apron could still force the Timberwolves to part ways with Karl-Anthony Towns. It makes it difficult for the Bucks to bolster their rotation around Giannis Antetokounmpo. Or for the Suns to do anything to help Kevin Durant and Devin Booker.
But hey, that’s the point of the exercise. The NBA is more reliant than ever on a system that promotes parity and forces teams, especially high-spending ones, to make tough choices. Your take on that philosophy may vary based on your team allegiance, the size of your home market, or your take on modern workplace dynamics.
In another era, the Warriors and Clippers would have spent lavishly to retain their stars and continue to sign second-tier players. Luxury taxes be damned. That’s a good thing for Warriors and Clippers fans, but maybe not so much for fans in Memphis or Salt Lake City, where revenues aren’t big enough to support deficit spending for years.
Sure, the Warriors lost a franchise legend and perhaps some luster after nearly a decade of dominance. But it allowed the Mavericks and Spurs to become a little stronger. The Clippers’ loss was the Sixers’ gain. The much-maligned Eastern Conference now has several teams ready to catch the Celtics. That’s objectively good for business. And it’s a living manifestation of the (somewhat Orwellian) phrase coined by the late commissioner David Stern more than a decade ago to describe the goals of a previous labor deal: “player sharing.”
So yes, we could see talent spread more evenly in the coming years. We could see another extension of the wild parity of the last six years. We may not see another dynasty anytime soon. Is that a good thing? A bad thing? Just a thing? Again, that may depend on your personal values as a fan.
I’ll leave the final word here to someone far more experienced and wise on the matter, a figure who presided over one of the most successful and glamorous franchises in the world and who was also renowned for his poker skills.
“What they’re trying to do is say, ‘Let’s all have the same number of chips and see who can build a team the best,’” former Lakers owner Jerry Buss said in 2000, after the NBA introduced the luxury tax. “I like the idea of having the same number of weapons and seeing who can steer the ship the best,” Buss said. “That’s competition.”