Trade & FA 2023-24: Stein-Ingram Trade Inevitable| LAL Want Lebron Back On Any Terms

[F Gump]

What I know about the CBA mostly comes from you. But I think you may have stated this a little too narrowly. Another part of the balance seems to be mortgaging the future to maximize the present (which isn’t new). I’m going to go out on a limb and say outrageous overpays aren’t entirely extinct.

Thank you. And I do agree, that the rules are one thing, but their impact on behavior (and how teams try to game the system) is still to be written.

There are ALREADY wild overpays imo. See Rockets, Houston. Bad teams with huge cap room to spend, those will happen, and some are going to push the envelope. But those overpays imo are less likely to move the general market, and they do take a team out of the mix to overpay the next time.

The bigger issue I see is that the NBA put some real thought into preemptively closing the workarounds that would allow teams to keep and increase a bloated payroll. Lots of little things --
1 losing TPE's 
2 no MLE at all
3 no ability to aggregate 2+ players to get 1
4 must take less back in trade, can't raise payroll
5 can't stack minimum-salary players to get a more expensive (and presumably more talented) in return.
6 you pick at the bottom if you are over apron 2
7 you can't trade those picks
8 you can't use cash either.

If you draft/develop well and want to PAY YOUR OWN an inflated deal, you can do that. Otherwise, you are out of the game to replace anyone who gets away.

I think teams like GS, LAC, and PHX (and perhaps a couple others) will go as far as they can on the "bust the aprons" road, until their star talent ages out, because they have little choice. But I don't think it's sustainable. And with the way the new rules limit additions to payroll and roster flexibility in trying to get the next pieces you need, I think it will be hard for more teams to jump up and join them, or to want to.