put another way: we have a CBA so punitive that we can’t keep the second best player we’ve developed in the last two decades, even though he signed a contract to stay here two years ago!
@Ndinsanity Jaylens contract was signed right as the new cba was being negotiated. I don’t think Brad realized how bad it was gonna be until it was too late.
I still think this trade is the worst trade in nba history. To your point, PG essentially makes the same money.
Celtics president Brad Stevens: "The new CBA coincided 7 years after the supermaxes were instituted…We may not be sitting here if there was a rule in the CBA that said guys you drafted & signed to 35% supermaxes count 25% against cap, bc that would allow you to build out toward the aprons with a lot more flexibility…47% of the cap is what (Jaylen Brown & Jayson Tatum) were when we won it all and that's just going up & up, and that's tough"
Q: "So you would say [Jaylen Brown trade] is primarily a move to restructure the books?"
Stevens: "No. I would say it's a move to keep us at a very competitive level and give us optionality moving forward"
@Ndinsanity The PA takes some blame. But I don’t really expect a fair negotiation for them vs the owners and their army of quants/lawyers.
It’s a tragedy that teams can no longer keep homegrown talent and every team who drafts well will have to be blown up once they’re off rookie deals.
It's the biggest NBA story non-cap nerds aren't talking about. The death of local TV revenue is having massive roster-building implications. There was a minute there where we thought cap growth (up to 10% annually) would outpace contract growth (up to 8%). Now, it's the opposite.
Brad Stevens pointed directly to the roster restrictions of having two players taking up 70% of the cap today.
I’m not sure the idea behind the new CBA was to break up homegrown duos due to second apron concerns. Doesn’t feel like a good thing for the league.
Platner needs to drop out ASAP - these are awful, credible allegations.
Said on the pod after the (also credible) June NYT story that his biggest problem going forward would be credibility. It's now abundantly clear that he just hasn't been honest about his past and can't be trusted as a candidate for office.
Saving grace is that the party can find a replacement by the 27th as long as he drops by the 13th, which I very much assume he will.
Now that we’re a couple days removed from the Mookie Betts trade, let’s kinda realize you essentially replaced Betts with Rafael Devers, then added Alex Verdugo, Jeter Downs and Connor Wong.
Andrew Benintendi will get more ABs, Kevin Pillar, and Jackie Bradley Jr gMore ABs. This is a better team.
@Ndinsanity It’s the worst trade in nba history. They essentially salary dumped a guy who was finals mvp and finished 6th in mvp voting. Also had a huge connection to the city. More than any current Boston player.
After sitting here watching NBA free agency this year and overall NBA movement over the past 2 years somebody has to say it....
The new CBA was sold as parity, but the first and second apron are starting to function like a hard cap on player value, team continuity, and player movement.
Teams are no longer making purely basketball decisions. They’re making fear-based apron decisions. That means good players get squeezed, homegrown cores get broken up, fan-favorite teams lose their identity, and the overall product loses some of the nostalgia and continuity that made people fall in love with the NBA in the first place.
This isn’t about players not understanding business. It’s the opposite. We understand that the NBA is a business. That’s why the @TheNBPA has to operate with elite business acumen, elite negotiating strategy, and real foresight.
The owners and the league walk into these meetings with killers that continue to run circles around us time and time again with elite lawyers, economists, cap experts, media strategists, and long term business operators. Players deserve a PA that is just as sharp, just as prepared, and just as aggressive about protecting our upside.
Too often, it feels like players are informed after the fact instead of being truly educated and empowered before decisions are made. That cannot continue.
The next CBA is a do or die moment for us as players. It's only going to get worse for us. We need transparency, accountability, and a serious re evaluation of who is representing us and how they are representing us.
This is not anti parity. This is pro player, fan, and product. The league is strongest when players are valued properly, great teams can stay together, and the people representing us are operating at the same level as the people sitting across the table.
There's a real chance Jaylen Brown could just be Rudy Gay who just so happened to play on a team that had great coaching structure and enough pieces around him for him to be successful & Brad Stevens was ahead of the curve...........OR the advanced metrics simply aren't measuring him properly & the league as a whole is wrong about him. I can't call it right now but I can't wait to see how it plays out.
My gut feel is that PG13 was a more portable player & I'm not sure how Maxey, VJ, Brown and Embiid will fit together and they're probably a 2nd round exit, again.
Wow. Already at Step 7 of the 12 stages of NBA grief…bargaining.
Teams trying to explain to their fans why they didn’t get Jaylen.
I’m sure we’ll soon read that he refused to play first base.
Oh, and having been in rooms with him for ten years?
JB usually was the smartest.
An anonymous NBA GM on the Jaylen Brown trade
“This is a classic case of the credit goes to the guy who scores but they're not driving team success. There's guys like this all over the league, the difference is he's not at $40M... he's at $60M. It's really hard to tie up that much money in your salary cap for one player unless they're truly generational, and he's not even close to that. Also, the league is getting smarter now. And here's the thing: the dumb teams are the cheap teams.”
(Via @BannedMacMahon)