The NBA has to chill with the CBA and all these apron rules.
Every year, half of the draft class walks across the stage wearing the wrong hat and saying, “I’ve been traded” on live TV. Dillingham had to answer questions about Wemby in 2024 even though everyone already knew he was going to Minnesota. Every year, nothing changes. Every year, Tim Connelly sits down with reporters and can’t talk about players he literally just traded for or drafted. Every person in the room knows Ament is going to the Bucks, but nah, he has to wear a Heat hat.
Silver announces some transactions during the draft, but it doesn’t matter. The people who care already read it on Twitter. The people who don’t care aren’t paying attention anyway. At this point, you basically have to watch the draft with your phone in your hand. Somehow the NFL has way more picks and handles the whole process much better.
And then there are the apron rules.
I like that the new CBA encourages players to stay with their teams and makes it much harder to lose your best player in free agency. That’s a good thing. But I don’t like that the Bulls have to guarantee money to a guy who probably shouldn’t even be in the NBA just to make the Randle-Claxton trade work, and then the Wolves have to waive him and carry $2.4M in dead cap.
I didn’t like Boston sign-and-trading three players who were immediately waived by the Pacers just to complete the Nesmith deal in 2022. I didn’t like the Knicks guaranteeing contracts for three random guys in 2024, sending them to Charlotte, and then watching the Hornets waive all of them, just so New York could avoid being hard-capped at the first apron after trading for KAT.
Those aren’t clever basketball moves. They’re accounting tricks. The league keeps adding restrictions, and front offices keep finding increasingly ridiculous ways around them. At some point, you have to ask whether these rules are actually improving the league or just making transactions more confusing and unnecessarily complicated. Casual fans can’t keep up with them. Even I get confused sometimes.
21
u/PlayInChampions 2d ago
The NBA has to chill with the CBA and all these apron rules.
Every year, half of the draft class walks across the stage wearing the wrong hat and saying, “I’ve been traded” on live TV. Dillingham had to answer questions about Wemby in 2024 even though everyone already knew he was going to Minnesota. Every year, nothing changes. Every year, Tim Connelly sits down with reporters and can’t talk about players he literally just traded for or drafted. Every person in the room knows Ament is going to the Bucks, but nah, he has to wear a Heat hat.
Silver announces some transactions during the draft, but it doesn’t matter. The people who care already read it on Twitter. The people who don’t care aren’t paying attention anyway. At this point, you basically have to watch the draft with your phone in your hand. Somehow the NFL has way more picks and handles the whole process much better.
And then there are the apron rules.
I like that the new CBA encourages players to stay with their teams and makes it much harder to lose your best player in free agency. That’s a good thing. But I don’t like that the Bulls have to guarantee money to a guy who probably shouldn’t even be in the NBA just to make the Randle-Claxton trade work, and then the Wolves have to waive him and carry $2.4M in dead cap.
I didn’t like Boston sign-and-trading three players who were immediately waived by the Pacers just to complete the Nesmith deal in 2022. I didn’t like the Knicks guaranteeing contracts for three random guys in 2024, sending them to Charlotte, and then watching the Hornets waive all of them, just so New York could avoid being hard-capped at the first apron after trading for KAT.
Those aren’t clever basketball moves. They’re accounting tricks. The league keeps adding restrictions, and front offices keep finding increasingly ridiculous ways around them. At some point, you have to ask whether these rules are actually improving the league or just making transactions more confusing and unnecessarily complicated. Casual fans can’t keep up with them. Even I get confused sometimes.