When it comes to the impact of the NBA’s current collective bargaining agreement, Bill Simmons has been ahead of the curve.
And it hasn’t just been The Sports Guy’s beloved Boston Celtics who have found themselves forced to trim salary in fear of the CBA’s dreaded second apron.
On the latest episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast, The Ringer founder and Rob Mahoney discussed the Indiana Pacers’ failure to re-sign Myles Turner, who proceeded to join the rival Milwaukee Bucks. And in doing so, Simmons once again questioned the CBA, which effectively creates a hard salary cap for teams spending at a certain level.
“The new CBA is just an apocalypse,” Simmons said. “It’s one of the worst things that I can remember in any pro sports league, how it played out this way where you have good teams basically sabotaging themselves because they’re so afraid of these penalties that I don’t know who wanted. I don’t know who the penalties serve other than the owners as a check and a balance for them not to spend too much money. That seems to be the only positive.”
Inevitably, the conversation shifted toward the Celtics, who have been the franchise most affected by the CBA’s salary restrictions this offseason. Just one year removed from winning the NBA title, Boston saved a combined $27.2 million in salary and $180 million in luxury tax spending by trading two key contributors in Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porziņģis, while also watching a third in Luke Kornet sign with the San Antonio Spurs as a free agent.
But while the Celtics might be the current poster child for the restrictive nature of the CBA, its impact is also being felt elsewhere. Last month, Denver Nuggets president Josh Kroenke openly speculated about a hypothetical Nikola Jokić trade, while even a team as seemingly well positioned as the Oklahoma City Thunder will inevitability have to shed salary despite having built the core of its roster through savvy trades and the NBA Draft.
“For the solution to the super team free agent movement to be [to] make it basically impossible for contenders to sustain over time feels like a real misallocation of what actually just happened,” Mahoney said. “Like, we’re trying to solve a problem by ultimately crippling the one actual solution, [which] is like internal development, teams’ ability to retain their own players. And the current CBA basically makes that model prohibitive.”
As Mahoney alluded to, this CBA seemingly came as a response to the super team era — which was also criticized— but has already proven to be an overcorrection. Don’t, however, count on these moves or conversations to end anytime soon, as the league’s current CBA is set to remain in place through the 2029-2030 season.