In July 2016, the Portland Trail Blazers signed restricted free agent Meyers Leonard, their backup center, to a four-year, $41 million contract. It was at the tail end of a surge of large contracts given out that summer, the greatest time in NBA history to be a free agent. This summer, the Blazers' starting center, Jusuf Nurkic, will be a restricted free agent. He might find it hard to draw an offer from an outside team larger than what his backup is being paid. In the 2015-16 season, the Boston Celtics assembled an impressive 48-34 season behind the play of a collection of gritty perimeter players. Two of them were Evan Turner and Marcus Smart. Turner was a bit more effective as an offensive creator, Smart more of a defensive grinder. But they played similar minutes and offered similar stats. Turner, who had the fortune of being an unrestricted free agent that summer, got a $17.5 million per season deal from the Blazers. This summer, Smart, who will be a restricted free agent, might face an environment in which role players could struggle to field outside offers above the $8.8 million midlevel exception, according to multiple league executives.... Read the rest here - http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/22263630/nba-financial-crunch-coming
The Blazers were ahead of the curve. They got all their spending out of the way two years ago! Ha Ha!
Well it was to be expected, wasn't it? The TV deal got bumped up significantly in 2016 hence additional money. The increases were never this steep in the years before and there was no reason why they would suddenly become so steep afterwards either.
It was a model of how the US government runs, where money is no object and lots of pork slid into every proposed bill.
It's a shame that the Blazers aren't able to find another team to drunkenly take on Leonard or Turners contract. We're about 54-55 games into the "new" Meyers Leonard. So glad they signed him.
Not going to be depressed about any of this - we've survived worse, we'll survive this too. We're Blazer fans, it's what we do.
At the end of the article the team's will get their cap space back by summer of 2019 and 2020. Then everyone will start the overspending all over again I guess.
That's exactly what will happen. The free agent class of 2016 are the luckiest basketball players ever, some of them might get crazy deals not once but twice. Someone like Biyombo would not have got more than $6M in 2015 and would not have gone above $6M in 2017 either. A combination of half decent playoffs appearance and additional cap basically earned him $70M he did not deserve. He's the best example of the craziness of that year but far from the only.
There is actually some truth to that. The projected cap was supposed to rise 7-10 million last year. It actually went down. There should be a rather good bump this year as i just would not expect it to sit again. It's like betting on Futures. They missed on that one but eventually the cap will go up.
We could be sitting with out #1 pick in the draft on crutches for the third season and never looking like he will play again. We could also be looking at out ROY having yet another miniscus surgery and playing half the games in a season. Then listening to a coach say "Scrappy" after every loss.....
Incorrect. It still went up. Just not as high as they were projecting. Cap '15-'16 -> $70M Cap '16-'17 -> $94.1M Cap '17-'15 -> $99.0M $99M is still larger than $94M.
I'm sorry. I did write that incorrect. The point i was trying to make is that the 2 million decrease in projection will not be added. The cap jump still represents a 5 percent increase over the 2016-17 level, set at $94 million. But given that two years ago the NBA had forecast the cap would rise to $108 million by this coming season, seeing it just shy of $100 million is a relative decrease. Thus the Futures reference.
What all the smart people failed to recognize is, the likability of the product was hurt by the grotesque increase in salaries. Several of us were skeptical of the league's projections for years 2+ of the TV deal.
