The cap will go up 10%, it has been mentioned before but the new CBA flattens cap increases to 10% of a course of years.
Yup. I really don’t like the second apron due to how limiting it is. If you’re Brad Stevens and just made a great sequence of deals to add talent, you should be able to benefit from it without killing your owners’ cash flow and your ability to make further changes.
Viewed solely through the lens of "what's good for the Celtics" rather than "what's good for the sport", is it possible to conclude that the new CBA hurts Boston long-term by making it increasingly punitive to keep the team together once the Tatum supermax kicks in... and, yet, improves Celtics' title equity from 2024 through, say, 2026 (let's pretend for the sake of discussion that Wyc keeps the current team together one year into the Tatum supermax years) by discouraging other teams from putting their own superteams together to challenge us? Or that just wish-casting and it's straight-up crappy for Boston any way you slice it?
I don't disagree, but there are some provisions there to punish cheap teams that don't meet the salary floor. To me, tilting a bit more towards parity over continuity is ok-ish overall. The real mistake is that the owners overreacted to the Warriors success resigning homegrown talent and decided to make that path unviable. Whereas that's a fairly unique (and somewhat commendable) approach— the focus should have been more on punishing teams that take the mercenary super-team route, and should have allowed a bit more relief for teams to resign homegrown talent. I suspect there's going to be so much payroll-driven superstar movement towards the end of the current CBA in 2028, 2029, it's going to feel senseless and debilitating for fan bases.
Feels to me like there will always be a couple teams willing to make short term luxury tax sacrifices, if they feel they are close, so maybe won’t make that much of a difference in the next couple of years for the Celtics. However, it just makes things less fun for me since I enjoy watching GMs put really good teams together through shrewd moves.
There was discussion here right after the CBA about whether fear of second apron restrictions would be so great that no one would dare go into it roster-wise (acknowledging that tax-wise is really an ownership question). I think what Celtics saw is that those frozen pick-type penalties may not be worse than having inferior players, and that the goal was to lock in the roster and salary slots before the penalties began to attach. And to your point, yes, I think there's a window for Celtics now whereas any team who hadn't already built their team and salary slots does not have the same opportunities. So they can look to trade out of some of these slots in the coming years so long as the core players (and what you can get for those slots) is useful.
I think this is correct. As mentioned in other threads, the restriction against aggregating isn't going to effect BOS at all and complicates things for other teams (LAC; MIA) in trying to get better. Plus, who cares about draft picks 7 years down the line?
I know I read it someplace here about what happens to the excess revenues while the CBA prevents the cap increases from keeping pace, but I can't recall. I imagine there will need to be some adjustment at some point, especially if revenues in continue to outrace the cap increases.
Do we have any hint that Hayward is a possibility? While he looked cooked last year I wonder if he can get more than the vet minimum from someone else
It gets thrown into an interest bearing pool which grows then gets drawn down to the next CBA to keep the cap raises going.
How so? This isn't baseball. There is a cap floor that requires teams to spend 90% of the cap.
Huh? It just redistributes the money. 50% of revenues still go to the players. Heck, they got more things included in revenue this time.
No, its intent was to prevent Steve Ballmer from buying a championship by not caring at all how much he went into the tax. Not even Kroenke is immune from feeling the pain of a couple hundred million in luxury tax (nor, in his particular case, is he motivated by anything other than maximizing his own take, as opposed to winning / having fun), but Ballmer is just that much richer than anyone else.
I think the new CBA helps the Celtics a lot during this window. Most 2nd apron teams don't have their tradeable contracts and intact picks, which is what you need in order to navigate the 2nd apron.
I agree completely and I'll also add that the 2023 offseason was executed perfectly, now that in 2024 aggregating salaries hard caps teams at the second apron. Last year, the Celtics aggregated Smart, Gallinari, Brogdon, and Williams into Porzingis and Holiday. Stevens got those done at the last possible moment.
My first thought is that outspending everyone didn’t get the Clippers anywhere. Most of these second apron teams are overloaded with vets who aren’t contributing up to their max contracts (suns, bucks, clips, etc). The new cap rules are a response to the black swan event of Durant going to the Ws, which isn’t going to happen again regardless because of the cap on tv revenue. It’s a solution to a problem that no longer exists.
If the NBA didn't get the huge TV contract they did, you would be right. However in a world where the cap is going to increase 10% year after year for the next ten years or so, those middle class contracts become super valuable and more likely. Also the new CBA is going to make second rounders super valuable to good teams. In fact, all the the things you are worried about are alleviated with the new TV contract which means when negotiating the new CBA Silver convinced the NBPA that the new contract was going to be bonkers. Also things get even better for the players if the NBA expands which it will (probably next year).
There is no world where Kornet is getting 5 million a year from the Celtics while you have Tillman for 3 million. I get the premise but that chart makes weird assumptions about some roster decisions.
Yea they'll probably attempt to replace end of rotation guys for cheaper, and every dollar saved there saves ownership many multiples worth in luxury tax payments. But even looking at payments for the top 5 (baking in White signing his extension) gets the team 40m above the salary cap in 2025-26 (when they'll officially be in the new repeater tax bracket I believe). Those 5 alone would equally a hefty 9 figure tax bill. I have no idea what ownerships actual willingness to pay is, but I'm very skeptical they'll be comfortable paying that much.
The Celtics can hold the load with nine figure luxury tax as long as they are winning, without issue. But you aren't going to pay 20 million a year to hold Kornet who at best gets you a win or two in the regular season. They will pay the top 5 and anyone in the rotation however the bench guys will always be in competition with the rest of the bench. If Pritchard comes back with a pot belly, he is out for a second and Jaden is taken his spot. The key is always having guys that can step up from late first round and second round picks.
The team already brings in over half a billion a year. They don't need funds so long as the value of the team is going up. Plus they are about to get a nice expansion check.
Cuban blueprint, partial divestment
That wasn't a partial divestment, it isn't his team anymore. Also the deal in Texas is a lot different than Boston.
Hey, I hope they do it. I'm very skeptical BBP would actually pay a luxury tax bill north of $200m in the next 3 years, even if they get a check worth ($200m? $300m?) for 2 additional expansion teams. I hope I'm wrong! But that is a historically large sum of money.
no, not unless we fail to sign White or trade a starter. You have to get below the luxury tax line - not merely the second apron, you have to be a non-taxpaying team - in order to reset the clock on that.
The issue that spreadsheet highlights is that even being willing to pay $100 mil is not obviously evidence they can pay $300 mil, given repeater.
I don't think the new cap rules were in response to KD's GSWs, it was in response to GSW of 2022 who won a championship having a league high salary of over $178M while spending an additional $170M on luxury taxes. Note that even at the payroll level, GSW out-spent BOS by approximately $36M, which at that time constituted a really good player who may have gotten BOS past GSW.
1. Cuban divested a partial stake, he went from 100% to a 27% stake. He sold a 73% ownership at a $4B valuation ($2.9B into bank acct)
You got a couple things confused here.
Fair point, but they couldn’t have gotten there without KD and the cap spike. By being able to sign KD, they were able to then sign and trade him for DLo, which turned into the Andrew Wiggins salary cap slot (and they wouldn’t have won in 2022 without Wiggins). That $36 million is basically the extra max of KD/Dlo/Wiggins.
The Celtics really do not have "one of the richest ownership groups in sports".
Understood but GSW managed to get under the cap in 2017 and 2020. It wasn't until 2021 and 2022 that their salaries really spiked - including their luxury tax payments - and from what I recall, the rest of the owners wanted to figure out how to stop it. As I said, in 2022, GSW had a payroll + luxury tax of over $340M, which was over 4 times what OKC spent ($78M) and 3 times over what several other teams spent. And the next year, payroll + tax was close to (or over, I can't remember the final figures) $400M.
The founders of Flex, Bain, Silver Lake, TPG, Vertex Pharma, Arch, and RA Capital might not have Balmer money but they are individuallly in the ball park with a lot of single owners in the NBA. Bonderman is worth over 6 billion, and there is a group of those guys who are in the 1-5 billion range. They are very rich group of Harvard grads. They will always have more resources than a team with majority billionaire besides Balmer. They all have other business interests worth billions unlike a Fenway Sports Group who have a lot of people whose main portfolio piece is FSG.
Since you brought up FSG, keep in mind that approaching Red Sox ownership the way you have described the Celtics you'd have to include all their wealthy limited partners too, and they have plenty of those guys with lots of independent income. The challenge with larger partner groups (and FSG, since you raised it, shows this) is we should not assume that everyone in the ownership group has unlimited financial commitment to the Celtics. That is almost surely not the case (it has not been in any of the public statements or other similar ownership groups that have been visible over the years). You can't just add up total wealth of all people with any ownership share---you have to assess what they are willing to put against the Celtics as a business separate from their others. What made Cuban interesting wasn't his total wealth so much as his commitment level; with the Celtics, we have less visibility and also less obvious wealth among the active owners than many other teams.
I think the bolded was an assumption some posters here were making when Jaylen became eligible for the super-max. That assumption is probably no longer valid, and is certainly not generally assumed by those that follow the league or team closely.
That assumption is certainly no longer valid even if it was a possibility back then. In the summer of 2026 if I had to guess it would be Jrue at age 36 who would be the most likely to be moved as well as possibly a banged up Porzingis. The Jays have entered a new stratosphere together with this Championship and the cohesion they have found together.
I've been thinking similar with regard to KP and Jrue. White will be around for the length of his new deal, hopefully Sam and PP for the next 3-4 years as well, Al as we know is probably on his last ride. But I can't see more than 1-2 more years with Jrue and KP as part of the mix (hope I am wrong about this).
FSG is way different that Boston Basketball Partners. You can't compare them at all. FSG has private equity money in it and some very poor partners. It is an portfolio asset. It will always be treated differently than BBP.
