About all these 40+ million a year deals....

[Kblaze8855]

Guys like Russ, Paul, Wall, Giannis(soon), Harden, Curry and so on.....

We really have to adjust our thinking for just how much money is out there right now. First of all....Curry is the only one actually making 40 this year. The rest are a couple years down the line. The NBAs current projection for 2021 is a 116 million cap at least. Could be higher. Will obviously go up later. But ill work off 2021 numbers since thats when all these mega deals actually hit 40 million and up aside from Steph who is already there.

You know what a guy like John Walls makes relative to the cap in 2021(his first year over 40 million)?

A lot less than Clyde Drexler made on the Rockets.

Clydes pay in 1996 relative to a modern cap? About 49 million dollars.

Patrick Ewing? 86 million. Only one player in the NBA made half as much. Maybe we need to quit wondering why his teams never got another star in the 90s...

Horace Grant made the 2021 cap hit equal of 70 million dollars in 1997(he was the second highest paid player in the league).

To make it a bit more modern....Kobe in 2014 made the cap hit equal of 53 million dollars in 2021.

Dikembe Mutombo in his last few good years? The equal of 50 million. He was over 44% of the salary cap.


By the time we get to 2023 when Russ and Wall hit that 47 million? It could be the cap hit equivalent of being just ahead of Damon Stoudamire and Webber but behind Mutombo, Karl Malone, Juwan Howard, Sheed, Shawn Kemp(....) and others in 2003.

You think NBA teams even care about the dollar figure? I bet they have charts by percentage....what does it matter of its a a dollar or 50 million? If the cap is 2 dollars 1 dollar and 25 million leave you the same piece of the pie to work with. You have to spend it anyway.


I feel like we are gonna see a lot more of these "Are you crazy? Nobody wants that contract!" deals moved going forward. The NBA has caught up to what these numbers actually mean faster than fans who see "180 goddamn million dollars? For Tobias Harris?" By cap hit thats what the Bulls paid Carlos Boozer in 2014. Less than Rudy gay made. Less than Zach Randolph.



Why else are these guys out here burning money like the Joker?










Because they have it.



There is so much money coming in boosting up the revenue split its insane. Plus teams like the the Rockets who have have a 900 million dollar local tv deal.....


As informed as we are we still view contracts like the ones from 20 years ago. And they just.....arent.

The cap is so huge 170 million for 5 years....isnt really that much.

Thats like baaaaarely more than Zydrunas Ilgauskas' first extension with the Cavs money.

Im not sure an actual "You signed it...now youre stuck with it" contract will exist at any point the next 5-10 years. The digital rights money is just too much.

They better hope there isnt a big correction coming down the line. Im not sure what it would take....but they gotta keep driving the cap higher now.....

[Shogon]

Adjusting for inflation aside, I wonder if we've seen peak NBA popularity already and as such peak salaries...

As Adam Silver himself has said, they're competing with so many forms of entertainment nowadays...

Were the NBA ratings down this year? How about the Finals/playoffs?

I'm just very skeptical.

The NBA still doesn't have that next generational, imagination capturing broad appeal guy after LeBron... there was an overlap of Jordan/Shaq before him...


I will say, the one thing the NBA really has going for it is the fact that they've turned their product into a soap opera far more than the other sports. Player accessibility and player branding are both at all time highs. That and ESPN pushes the NBA more than they do any other sport, like almost 12 months a year...

[NBAGOAT]

yea supermax will be 35% for now. I think we're a lot more picky with team building now and really not into the idea of giving out overpaid contracts just to get past the first round of the playoffs.

With that in mind giving 25-30% of your cap to someone like middleton, harris or even a young star like murray seems like too much. You are paying guys who arent even quite all star lvl to play like your 2nd best player.

That's just likely not winning a title unless you have a fantastic superstar, built the rest of the roster really well through cheap deals and the draft, and/or are willing to go deep into the luxury tax to build a stacked roster. Like with GS i'm more fine with them overpaying dangelo giving him 25% of the cap. they dont care about paying a huge luxury tax and will have likely 3 guys making more than him once dray resigns

[Kblaze8855]

Any of you look at what rookie deals are now?

The NBA makes so much ****ing money Zions rookie deal is for like 60 million dollars counting the final year....which unlike past eras...he might actually opt into. Rookies used to take the first contract offered because they had not made much so far. When your rookie deal is 60 million you can afford to hit em with the Porzingis move and take the qualifying offer on your rookie deal to be an unrestricted free agent.

Thats when we will know the tipping point is reached.

When 22 year olds turn down 140 million because they dont like the team/city and they can afford to wait.

Yao Mings rookie deal wasnt even 20 million dollars. After taxes(And in his case chinas cut) you still need money to live the rest of your life.

NBA rookie deals are forever rich money now if you arent a moron.

They dont need your extension.

[Bosnian Sajo]

Zion's rookie deal is actually 4 years (2+2)/$44m, but still your point is sound, it's a lot more than previous rookie deals.

But you can't really blame us for not looking at it percentage wise when the money is so much more than we have ever seen an athlete make. Even baseball salaries these days are staggering, probably more so to me than NBA deals considering I know just HOW POPULAR the NBA is globally, meanwhile I'm not aware how popular baseball is...at all.


But your argument does make these recent deals look a lot more reasonable, I have to admit. Bev's deal for example (which I argued was money that could have been better spent) is worth 12.3 million the first year, which is 11.28% of the $109m cap. In comparison, in 2010 11.28% of the cap would bring a player roughly $6.54m salary per year....which is pretty damn reasonable. Wasn't the MLE at that time around $5m?


That's a really good point made in this thread, about percentages. We all see the breaking news about x player signing a $50m, $100m dollar deal and we get blinded by the sheer volume of the number...when in reality, if we just did some simple math to figure out what percentage of the cap that deal is taking, you can easily compare it to previous years and understand that the deal is reasonable.


And I've always maintained this: I'd 100% rather the players ALL get overpaid than for the owner to keep 80% while sprinkling the remaining 20% on what makes this league so successful, the players.


While we're on the topic of money...what I'm interested in is how does the money coaches make in this day and age compare to previous years? Idk if there is a cap for coaches, I'm unaware of how that all works so that comparison may not be as black and white as the NBA salary where we just take a percentage of the cap to compare salaries.

[Kblaze8855]

With Zion and all first rounders really I’m talking about the money from the qualifying offer at the end which they would sign if they refuse to sign an extension. The last year of Zions deal if he signs the qualifying offer will pay him more than a first year max contract paid in the 2000’s. Zions is like 18-19 million. Ayton is 16 and change. Pretty soon the top pick will have final season rookie deals over 20 million dollars.

[DMAVS41]

Yep, which is why overpaying for guys in the present that a team really likes, especially in limited cap flexibility situations...actually makes a lot of sense.

Honestly not a bad strategy for teams that aren't landing star and superstar free agents to overpay good role players both in terms of dollars and years...especially if you can schedule the salary to reduce over-time.

Guys like that can become really valuable just after 1.5 years sometimes.

[Kblaze8855]

While we're on the topic of money...what I'm interested in is how does the money coaches make in this day and age compare to previous years? Idk if there is a cap for coaches, I'm unaware of how that all works so that comparison may not be as black and white as the NBA salary where we just take a percentage of the cap to compare salaries.

Riley on the Knicks made the modern cap equal of 17 million as a player. But they had no real rules back then. When the Heat lured him from the Knicks they paid him more and gave him part ownership along the lines of 10% but he had to give it up when the CBA outlawed it years later. Total compensation wise the top coaches were paid like max level players way back though. Its one reason they hated that players salaries increased. They didnt think they could get the same respect from people paid 2-3 times what they made.

[Kblaze8855]

Yep, which is why overpaying for guys in the present that a team really likes, especially in limited cap flexibility situations...actually makes a lot of sense.

Honestly not a bad strategy for teams that aren't landing star and superstar free agents to overpay good role players both in terms of dollars and years...especially if you can schedule the salary to reduce over-time.

Guys like that can become really valuable just after 1.5 years sometimes.

The issue is what to judge an overpay by....people do it in raw dollars when raw dollars dont matter.

If you look it over....theres a pretty normal amount to spend on great players(like 30% most of the time) and good players(12-15%). When you flip those you simply cant build a talented team without being GOAT tier at drafting and keeping guys on rookie deals NFL style.

Overpaying still obviously exists. It just isnt as simple as the sticker shock dolllar figure. We would all be more informed if ESPN reported cap percentages.....but that just isnt as eye grabbing as saying 170 million dollars.

[Jasper]

Bucks when Kohl owned it , had it for sale at 350mill.

I new this was bottom dollar value , and e-mailed him , and told him I would buy 50k if he was interested....

He sold the franchise to the current owners.

Do you think the Bucks are worth 350m ??

Hell no - more like a billion now in less than 5 years !!!!

[DMAVS41]

The issue is what to judge an overpay by....people do it in raw dollars when raw dollars dont matter.

If you look it over....theres a pretty normal amount to spend on great players(like 30% most of the time) and good players(12-15%). When you flip those you simply cant build a talented team without being GOAT tier at drafting and keeping guys on rookie deals NFL style.

Overpaying still obviously exists. It just isnt as simple as the sticker shock dolllar figure. We would all be more informed if ESPN reported cap percentages.....but that just isnt as eye grabbing as saying 170 million dollars.

I agree with that, but you are missing my point.

I'm talking about teams that aren't in the process of contending...using free agency as a tool to acquire players that can later be flipped for what allows a team to build a contender.

So, take a team that is rebuilding and isn't contending, but has cap space. I think a missing strategy is to go after the quality role player type players and overpay them (which just means above market value) in terms of dollars and years currently...especially if you can decrease the yearly salary over the life of the contract...so that big initial cap hit happens in a season it doesn't matter as much

Usually, rebuilding franchises pay guys like that on 1 year deals...sometimes 2...but that really doesn't do anything for the franchise. It often isn't an asset that has enough value to be flipped the way moving a guy with 2.5 years left on what now would be considered a good contract will have.

A franchise like the Mavericks needs to adopt this strategy...I get why they did what they did after 2011...it made sense to go for it...but continuing to chase big name free agents and sign guys to limited year deals like we have in the past isn't optimal....especially when the lifeblood of the Mavericks is basically trades only in non-tanking years. And, imo, they did that just this year. I don't love the Powell extension, but Curry/Wright are the type of deals I'm talking about...Maxi as well. Those deals will likely only look better and better over-time.

I'm not talking about "good players" like Harrison Barnes or Wiggins or something...I'm talking about actual role players that aren't going to get overpaid to the extent of a guy like Barnes.

[Kblaze8855]

Im not sure an actual "You signed it...now youre stuck with it" contract will exist at any point the next 5-10 years. The digital rights money is just too much.

They better hope there isnt a big correction coming down the line. Im not sure what it would take....

Now we know. This situation is gonna drive yearly revenue down and the cap with it....but the same dollar figure on deals.

Bad contracts just got worse.

[Shogon]

Now we know. This situation is gonna drive yearly revenue down and the cap with it....but the same dollar figure on deals.

Bad contracts just got worse.

Bad contracts just got damn near unmovable.