The 2024 offseason will forever be remembered as the summer of the aprons. Some of the NBA’s most expensive teams were forced to take austerity measures in the face of new rules instituted in the 2023 collective bargaining agreement. The Clippers allowed Paul George to walk for nothing. The Nuggets did the same with Kentavious Caldwell-Pope. The Warriors signed and traded Klay Thompson away. While these were among the bigger moves of the offseason, they have proven widely unpopular among fans.
There are several reasons for that, but two stand out. The first is that teams breaking up for financial purposes is rarely the most fun outcome. Thompson, under another set of rules, may have been able to retire as a Warrior alongside Stephen Curry and Draymond Green. The Clippers went from genuine contention to the lower half of the Western Conference by losing George, and few fans want to take contenders off of the board. The second issue is the limitations imposed on teams when it comes to improving. It’s no secret that offseason drama fuels a lot of the NBA’s success. If the number of teams that are able to sign or trade for a star is lower, well, suddenly offseasons include less drama.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver addressed these concerns at the league’s summer league and defended the new rules. “What I’m hearing from teams, even as the second apron is moving to kick in, the teams are realizing there are real teeth in those provisions,” he said. “I don’t know how to view this, but I know reports have come out that the summer was boring from a fan standpoint. I don’t certainly think it was. We still saw a lot of critically important players moving from one team to another as free agents.
“But at the same time, I think this new system, while I don’t want it to be boring, I want to put teams in a position, 30 teams, to better compete. I think we’re on our way to doing that.”
The NBA has had six champions in the past six seasons, but it would be unfair to credit these new rules for creating that parity, considering they are only now really being instituted. One could credibly argue that other factors had already pushed the NBA towards producing wider fields of contenders and that the new rules have only pushed them further. A healthy player-movement environment theoretically makes it easier for new contenders to emerge because they always have the tools needed to improve. The opposite could even be true in this environment. Say, for instance, that some dynastic team does emerge despite all of these rule changes. It becomes significantly more difficult to make the moves needed to oppose them in a world with second-apron restrictions.
The truth is that it’s far too early to say how exactly these new rules are going to impact league business moving forward. NBA front offices tend to be fairly resourceful. There are going to be exploitable loopholes and roster-building hacks here, even if we don’t quite know what they are going to be. The Thunder pushing chips in to add a top free agent in Isaiah Hartenstein while two of their top players, Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams, are still on cheap rookie deals, which might suggest that all-in pushes need to come earlier now. Jalen Brunson’s below-market extension might redefine how teams use max contracts. A new equilibrium hasn’t developed. It will over time, and only then will we understand what these rules mean for the league’s long-term health.
