The Spurs and Thunder have laid the first attempted blueprints for sustained success in the second-apron world

The 2024 NBA offseason will always be remembered as the summer of the second apron. This one rule change scared the Los Angeles Clippers enough to let Paul George walk away for free. It played a significant role in the breakup of Golden State’s legendary trio of Klay Thompson, Stephen Curry and Draymond Green. It even compelled LeBron James to take his first sub-max salary since 2014. No one is safe. The entire NBA is reorienting itself around this single rule.

Or, more accurately, the league is reorienting itself around the dozen or so rules that flow out of it. Second-apron teams face restrictions on the trade market (can’t aggregate salary, can’t take back more money than they send out) and in free agency (no mid-level exceptions, no buyout players whose former salary was above the non-taxpayer mid-level exception). 

They even face restrictions if their own, internally developed players, get too expensive. Once you finish a season as a second-apron team, your first-round pick seven years into the future is “frozen.” It can no longer be traded. If you finish above the second apron in more than one of the next four seasons afterward, that pick drops to No. 30 overall. Even if you stay below the second apron long enough, you still lock that pick out of trades for four years. These rules apply no matter how you get to the second apron. Even if it’s just by re-signing your own players, you face all of these roster-building limitations.

The common refrain has been that these rules will enforce parity with an iron fist. Even if you can build a championship-caliber team, you won’t be able to keep it together for more than a few years before the second apron breaks it up. This is going to be true of some of the teams built largely before the apron rules changed and are contending right now. Minnesota and Boston, for instance, are currently primed for two-year all-in runs before they have to duck the line again or else see their draft picks drop. Both teams have taken steps to set themselves up for the future, but, inevitably, they will both also…

Source link : https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/the-spurs-and-thunder-have-laid-the-first-attempted-blueprints-for-sustained-success-in-the-second-apron-world/

Author : Sam Quinn

Publish date : 2024-07-07 13:32:47

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