LOL

Nah, Phoenix has a knack for keeping old guys on the court, CP3 ain’t going to be traded, they ride this out.

Still doesn’t make anyone feel better that they’re 8 games away when the Lakers are nowhere in shooting distance.

I know you’re lurking – feel free to pop in. Getting tiresome educating foos on my own.

Be hard for me to see Philly trading away the last of The Process. Certainly not to us but one can dream…

“Me? I wouldn’t touch James Harden with a ten foot pole.” Man, that is really funny. Lol!

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You got that right. Unfortunately, the truth is you need a lot of content of character to be judged right, whereas the color of the skin is judged at first sight.

Very good one, John. I totally agree with you.

Ha, ha!

Memphis will hve Bird RIghts so can be generous in extending if not maxxing alot of them out. Ja will get a supermax, methinks, after that you just need to keep the key cogs.

“Bane becomes Harden.”

I will take a good hearty laugh at this one.

The Griz is scary. They will have 35 mil in cap space and that doesn’t even include the full MLE. They can easily add a couple of quality vets to complement their young stars. They also have plenty of draft picks. They may even end up with the Lakers pick which will give them 3 firsts this year alone. They could make trades into a heir cap space using picks. If their owner doesn’t mind spending money, they could dominate for years.

Honestly, I have been frustrated with KAT simply because of the facts you stated, Jamie. You are absolutely right on your take.

KAT, Jokic and EMbiid should all be talked about on the same level. Ayton…maybe could get there but probably tops out at more of a Valanciunas, Adams, Vucevic level. Good, sometimes great, but not consistent or dynamic enough to be a top big man. Easy to see why Phoenix has balked at maxing him out even though they may be forced to this summer. or close to it.

If Kat had a better team, situation, around him from the start I feel like his narrative would be very different. I think everything he went through over the last couple of years has hardened him into more of a pro and his talent has always been legit. Wish he could have done that without so much loss but the journey is different for everyone. There is no certified blueprint that works for all.

If Minny would trade KAT for AD straight up Rob should fall over trying to say Yes really fast…

KD’s already at that point, not just a matter of time. This is now a problem league-wide: older dudes who were once the marquee names making their teams relevant on their own no longer able to carry that load. But at the same time, they still want all the money and respect that they’d expected when they did change the game.

Now there’s little doubt guys like Lebron, KD, Kyrie, and Harden despite all their flaws will get the maximum allowable salary they can earn. Why? Well, teams would rather be relevant and newsworthy than actually try and jumpstart their rebuilds by bottoming out. They also know that with these guys through a fortuitous chain of events, they might just make some noise, though that’s highly unlikely.

So what’s the answer? Well the “union” could finally vote in to tamp down max deals in favor of the other 430 members, but they seem to lack the backbone to slice up the pie in their favor. The owners could and should create a structure where these old dudes can’t keep taking upwards of 50% of the cap on their own, but I’d expect the “union” to fight tooth and nail on that. It’d be nice to have a revived amnesty clause, but the podunk markets (despite almost universally now having deep-pocketed ownership) will fight hard against that as being seen as too favorable to “big” markets, whatever that means at this point. They could also go out of the box and do some sort of weighted scale, where only some part of the contract counts against the cap but that could get complicated and confusing, but as someone who’s read the CBA, complicated and confusing is par for the course.

I think a big part of the problem is raises often outpace increases in the revenue split on Max deals. Since they’re tied to the cap at initiation, they should be tied to the cap throughout the life of the deal. Raises should never outpace the cap. I’d also like to see the max deals max out at 35% of cap at 12 years in the league. Past that it should go back down to 30%. Contracts shouldn’t be guaranteed at all past age 36. It just does no one any good (other than the player) to get a massive deal at the twilight of their career only to drag down their team and fanbase with them. The league must do something about this or many a team will end up suffering through another iteration of this Westbrook saga.

That said, I wouldn’t get my hopes up. Even though this would make for a better product on the floor, all the owners and players care about is the money split. Beyond that there are some ancillary issues they’ll squabble over, primarily guarantees & soft caps, but that’s something neither side will pay much attention to once the money’s agreed upon. Nothing else much ever changes in these negotiations other than making it tougher to buy your way out of irrelevance becoming more difficult. You’d think they’d want to make a better product for the fans, which they could do with some of these tweaks, but they’re never seriously considered. They seriously couldn’t care less about the fans. It’s just billionaires and millionaires doing what they have to so the sheep still pay their penance.

Simmons is a joke of an NBA player at this point. Gun shy, focused on himself and not about the team, obviously. The only thing that lingered longer than Simmons back and “mental” issues was Nunn’s bone bruise.

I appreciate that being an NBA player is not all sunshine and butterflies, that there is a lot that goes into it in terms of being a public figure and so on. That, however, is all part of the job. I’ve found Ben’s attitude this year to be demeaning towards people who are actually dealing with mental illness and issues related to stress. I’m not saying he shouldn’t be a human being, but a trade for Philly to Brooklyn either didn’t solve anything at all or the issue wasn’t really as pervasive as he would like everyone to think.

How that all goes down this summer (his arbitration for recouping lost salary from the 76ers) will be interesting. Will the NBA and NBAPU come to some semblance of agreement over this point? it has the potential to all but upend the ability for a team to do anything at all to enforce a signed contract. It’s already nigh impossible for a GM to do his job, all it takes is a couple weeks for a star player to get whiny and ask to be traded while not really showing up for work. It’s a freedom of movement and entitlement that few others on Earth have access to or even expect from the work place.

It’s nearly impossible to build a 3 star super team with the massive salaries. The only way to really do it is by drafting at least 2 of the 3 and bringing on the 3rd before the other two get huge max deals. I wonder if anyone will even try again after the Nets and Lakers implosion this year.