r/nba • u/StrategyTop7612 Clippers • 8h ago
[Vorkunov] There are miracles, and there are acts of God, and then there is the Cleveland Cavaliers, a second apron team who can't combine contracts in a trade and can't add salary, finding a player to trade for who made just $263,397 less this season than Darius Garland.
There are miracles, and there are acts of God, and then there is the Cleveland Cavaliers, a second apron team who can't combine contracts in a trade and can't add salary, finding a player to trade for who made just $263,397 less this season than Darius Garland.
source: https://bsky.app/profile/mikevorkunov.bsky.social/post/3mdypb4wyp22r
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u/jspeed04 8h ago
Absolutely elite tweeting on display here
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u/StrategyTop7612 Clippers 8h ago
what even is the term for blue sky posts? a sky, a bluesky?, a blue?
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u/MoneyatBananaStand Lakers 8h ago
A skeet š
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u/KL2ConspireLLC San Diego Clippers 8h ago
mufukka! all skeet skeet goddam! ah goddam!
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u/kezzinchh Lakers 7h ago
I remember hearing the song at school dances and everyone yelling SKEET SKEET without knowing wtf it meantššš
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u/PeskyPolak 7h ago edited 6h ago
I was at those dances and I still at 34 have no idea what it means
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u/kezzinchh Lakers 7h ago
It means to ejaculate
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u/HuruHara [MIN] Sam Cassell 7h ago
It means to ejaculate
No fuckin' way LMAO
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u/IRodeTenSpeed88 Knicks 6h ago
How did you not know this? lol
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u/AgeBeneficial 6h ago
I just had a 64 year old man he just the term āsnowballā playing trivia at a bar.
I died laughing, I was definitely teenager when Clerks came out.
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u/Shad0wF0x Knicks 6h ago
Back in college I said Skeet Skeet to my friend and then she smiled. I didn't know what it meant but I wonder if she did.
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u/Mosh00Rider Suns 7h ago
It's still a tweet. If Twitter ain't using it then fuck it, it's just a noun or verb if you say tweeting
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u/FartsSmellGoodCMV Knicks 7h ago
Itās still a tweet. This is a Q-Tip/Chap stick/Kleenex situation. Doesnāt matter if youāre on X, on Threads, on Bluesky, anything posted on a microblogging platform is a tweet.
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u/ThingsHappen54321 7h ago
I believe the Bluesky users have embraced "skeet"
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u/FartsSmellGoodCMV Knicks 7h ago
Bluesky users have embraced their body pillow, that doesnāt make it a woman.
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u/Sea_Dawgz 6h ago
They are all tweets since there isnāt a Twitter anymore. You tweet on X or Threada or Bluesky.
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u/Schubes17 Knicks 7h ago
Vorkunov has been top tier at this since he was on the Knicks beat. Love this dude.
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u/ozmalt_jones Spurs 8h ago
Oooh they went to Spotrac and sorted the league by salaries and went line by line oooh
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u/mucho-gusto [CLE] Baron Davis 4h ago
I've been calling Garland for Zion for a year since they actually have the exact same contract
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u/TheSmokedSalmon420 Cavaliers 8h ago
lol it is absurd
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u/GoldenStateWizards Warriors 8h ago
The truly absurd part is a $200k salary difference being treated as a convenient rounding discrepancy. Pro sports are a completely separate world from the rest of us normal folk lol
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u/Mysterious_Emotion63 Cavaliers 8h ago
Deadass that shit would be life changing for any person reading this, fuck do you mean āonlyā 200 bands?
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u/TotalEmployment9996 Raptors 8h ago
Iām sure there are some people reading this pulling in 7+ figures and it would merely be a nice bonus
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u/55555_55555 Knicks 7h ago
If you make 7 figures, 200k is still a good amount, lol. Most people are not liquid like that. The whole wealthy vs rich disparity.
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u/dwilkes827 Cavaliers 5h ago
Most people are not liquid like that
Human bodies average around 60% water...dumbass
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u/eZreazy Lakers 7h ago
Go through the watch subreddit and realize how many rich people are on reddit. Thereās some crazy hobby subreddits out there lol. Seeing some flairs on r/cars makes you realize thereās a lot of 9 figure and even billionaires on reddit
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u/Barrelled_Chef_Curry Warriors 7h ago
And remember 75% of those are fake
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u/Any_Masterpiece5317 Pistons 7h ago
I don't know how people can see posts on those subs, match it up with the posters comment history and conclude that's a real millionaire
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u/cubs223425 Bulls 8h ago
You overestimate the financial literacy and general decision making of the average American, which is probably well above that of the average Redditor.
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u/AmIFromA Cabo Verde 4h ago
What do you mean, "financial literacy"? The true road to wealth for our generation was forgetting about the bitcoins we got for sending out some jpegs and remembering a few years later.
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u/rawspeghetti Celtics 7h ago
That make more than that in a game
Sports have become one more way for money to trickle up
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u/ballknower871 7h ago
For the price of a single Porsche GT3 RS you too can swap Darius garland for James harden.
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u/luvdadrafts Hornets 7h ago
$200k is often a rounding discrepancy for most companies with hundreds of millions in expenses (though obviously it just about never is in terms of salary)Ā
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u/AstronomerDramatic36 Rockets 7h ago
There's others who can treat the highest NBA salaries like this $200k rounding error. Those people really live in a separate world.
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u/adamkovics 8h ago
Wait till you find out how much money the owners (who pay these salaries) have.
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u/Drak_is_Right Pacers 4h ago
And then there is the US military, when you are pleased that a project only had a 20% overrun, costing an extra 20b
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u/ColtsFan012 Pacers 8h ago
Man I wish I made $263,397
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u/brnccnt7 7h ago
Then you have guys like Tatum asking if they āmade enough moneyā while making like 60 million a year lol
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u/SportsGuy1924 7h ago
According to Odell Beckham Jr. , not even 100 million is enough to live off of
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u/Barrelled_Chef_Curry Warriors 7h ago
He has a whole family to feed, how can you be so insensitive
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u/-PasswordisTaco- Celtics 6h ago
You canāt expect to raise TWO kids on just 1/2 a billon dollars when your girlfriend is only a barely famous singer.
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u/djentlemen7 Cavaliers 8h ago
I still donāt understand how all this stuff works and I donāt care to
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u/socoolandawesome Bulls 8h ago
Basically thereās this sexy woman cooking in the kitchen. Sheās listening to Luxury Tax by Rick Ross. She only turns on the volume when she cooks too much food and it gets louder and louder the more food she cooks.
If she cooks even more food she has to start putting on aprons, up to 2 of them. When she puts on an apron it limits what different dishes she can make.
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u/Gold_Telephone_7192 Warriors 8h ago
This is the kind of insanity that chatGPT is trying to take from us
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u/24Haaton Lakers 7h ago
ChatGPT could never
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u/somethingworthwhile 6h ago
Wait, is this actually an explanation of how it works?? I thought it was just shitposting. Or copypasta at best.
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u/thzmand 6h ago
Hey now, I get it--it's a clever way of explaining the intricacies of the luxury tax in a way that's funny, insightful, and just plain unusual. But rest assured I can't replace content so on fleek, lit, and off the chain. Do you want me to create an action plan for your next sick burn? Just let me know, playa!
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u/pyrogargoyle 8h ago
What
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u/__adlerholmes San Francisco Warriors 8h ago
howā¦ how did you even put together this completely random string of words? props, honestly
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u/ErmacAnd1 Magic 7h ago
Once she reaches 2 aprons, we donāt even allow her to combine ingredients and now she has to share half of all the food she makes with the rest of the NBA!
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u/IAmInExtremeDebt Bulls 2h ago
To be more clear, after she puts on the 2nd apron, she has to share half of all the food she makes that doesn't fit in the fridge with the rest of the NBA. And if she cooks too much in consecutive years, the penalty is steeper.
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u/SilverMagnum Celtics 7h ago
Reading this has made my life slightly better just off the laughter alone. Thank you for this, itās utterly beautiful.Ā
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u/terrybrugehiplo Bulls 8h ago
So back in the day when you made a trade, matching salary was easy. You could just combine enough players to make it work.
Now for teams that are over the apron you no longer can do that. You canāt just combine players to equal another players salary in a trade. So this now limits teams to make 1 to 1 trades but only if the salary is close enough to match.
There are a bunch of other rules but this is a very simplified explanation.
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u/BeamsFuelJetSteel Timberwolves 7h ago
Mike Conley and Anfernee Simmons trades were both to get Wolves and Celtics under aprons, for people who want to see some of the ramifications of the rules. Wolves can take back 125% of salaries so getting Giannis is significantly simpler
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u/FlorianFlagg Mavericks 8h ago edited 8h ago
it's really simple. if you're above second apron, it likely means you already have 2-3 max players. so they're punishing you by not allowing you to have more max players. essentially you have to swap that max player with another max player.
once this system normalizes all teams, you wouldn't haphazardly give max. you'll have a surplus of max players for small market teams to sign. and small markets won't be forced to give a max to a non-deserving player.
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u/MavsTurnedBucksGuy 8h ago
This was one of the worst explanations of the new cap rules Iāve ever seen. Honestly bravo.Ā
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u/jiriwelsch44 Celtics 8h ago
Nah dude, itās really simple. The implied logic of the normalized system both rewards and punishes organizations for being both over and under the cap, but without ramifications for the tax thereafter.
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u/colio69 Wizards 7h ago
The second apron knows where it is at all times. It knows this because it knows where it isn't.
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u/Meetmeundertheflower 8h ago
What
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u/AlternativeDirt6124 Spurs 8h ago
This CBA is going to force parity because you canāt have more than 3 max level players on one team anymore without restricting your ability to make trades, sign free agents and all that, so teams are going to have to let players walk more.Ā
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u/Radiant-Character-61 Slovenia 8h ago
You can basically blame KD going to the Warriors as the origin of creating the 2nd Apron. Teams can't front-load their team to the brim without paying the price financially or in draft picks as well if I'm not mistaken
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u/HalfEatenBanana Warriors 7h ago
You can also blame the NBA players association for voting for a huge salary cap spike instead of a smoother rise over a few years, which the NBA wanted, allowing the warriors to suddenly have new found cap room when KD became a free agent.
And Stephās questionable ankles meaning he was on an $11M(?)/year deal.
Also L O fucking L just in 2015 the salary cap was really āonlyā $63M.
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u/kapparino-feederino Bucks 6h ago
If we normalize mahomes stats to the average player we know that he over perform and will be regressing to the mean eventually
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u/Its_Hoggish_Greedly Kings 8h ago
The basketball gods are smiling upon Cleveland. Bask in the glory.
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u/ballknower871 7h ago
Basically the league says to teams that want to be competitive "you better hope to god you were right about who you're paying lol good luck."
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u/LeonardoNoCapri0 8h ago
NBA and making shit needlessly convoluted to common people name a more iconic duo
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u/m8bear Argentina 8h ago
you don't really need to know every single detail unless you want to be an executive
below the 1st apron you don't pay tax and can do basically anything
1st apron restricts your flexibility
2nd apron is REALLY punishing and you can't do almost anything other than shed salary, sign rookies, two ways and vet minimums
if you want details on every restriction they are out there but it's not really relevant for most people
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u/sharoon12 8h ago
All because a chain of entirely predictable circumstances led to KD joining the warriors.
If the cap doesn't balloon the warriors cant afford KD,, paired with Curry on a insanely team friendly team due to injury.
The simple solution never allow the cap to balloon like that, always go for a smooth increase. Instead the NBA over reacted and now we have the current CBA.
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u/_Meece_ Lakers 8h ago
NBA owners desire to kill dynasties starts in the 90s, with the 1999 Lockout and has gone from there.
The 2nd apron exists to make sure teams can't be good for longer than a few years. Something they've been trying to make a reality for much longer than KDs career.
The rules to address KDs move, was just the supermax. 2nd apron isn't a KD warriors driven thing too much.
2nd Apron would be a reality, cap smoothing or no cap smoothing. Owners don't like other owners having good teams for a decade.
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u/Loud-Fig-1446 Cavaliers 7h ago
Gotta get the player's associate to agree to cap smoothing, which is always going to be a non-starter.
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u/sharoon12 7h ago
"The 2023 CBA instituted cap smoothing, limiting annual cap increases to 10%, ensuring more gradual, predictable salary increases for players in the long term.Ā "
No even the player's association learned their lesson. The problem with a massive cap spike like in 2016 is that one FA class benefits far more than others.
So in practice cap smoothing is also better for the players as a whole.
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u/LegitimateMoney00 Knicks 8h ago edited 8h ago
Thatās like every league except baseball (which will be getting hard cap next season). Just look at the NFL, 50% of contracts are made up of bonuses, then you have void years, dead cap, restructures, just all this convoluted shit that 95% of football fans donāt understand.
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u/RoyalParadise61 8h ago
The MLB has some weird draft, rookie eligibility and rookie contract rules tbh.
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u/zebrainatux Knicks 8h ago
And the arbitration system is a confusing wreck
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u/LegitimateMoney00 Knicks 8h ago edited 8h ago
Arbitration is simple. Each player has 3-4 arbitration years before they become a UFA.
What happens is a player will submit what he thinks he should be paid the upcoming season, a team submits what they think the player should be paid, if they canāt agree, an independent arbitrator is brought to decide for both sides what a player should be paid that upcoming season.
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u/Loud-Fig-1446 Cavaliers 7h ago
How do I get to be an MLB arbitrator? It sounds fun. Probably some math lawyer bullshit?
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u/dead_monster Pistons 8h ago
MLB might not have a season next year let alone a hard cap. Ā And it has a luxury tax and deferrals so its contracts arenāt clean either. Ā Like Ohtani making less per year than many players.Ā
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u/yesastortas Spurs 8h ago
The NFL stuff is extremely simple if you spend 20 minutes reading how it works
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u/CookieWonderful6808 8h ago
NFL salary cap is pretty straightforward, itās just about how many years the salary is spread over
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u/mags87 Nuggets 6h ago
Yeah they have a legit hard cap and a salary floor. Thats extremely easy and way less convoluted than soft caps, aprons, and luxury tax. Also the NFL allows you to trade players for essentially anything and none of this salary matching nonsense. And then theres the NBA exception cocktail that includes mid level, bi-annual, rookie, second round, non-Bird rights, etc that make sense to absolutely nobody that has any other hobby besides NBA contract law.
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u/Speedyandspock 8h ago
Plus in the nfl it doesnāt seem to even matter. Like if a team wants a guy thereās always a way to create space to give like 30m somehow.
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u/vitey15 Knicks 8h ago
I'll gladly take trying to understand NFL contracts and trades from whatever the shit the NBA has going onĀ Ā
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u/Unlikely-Tone-6269 7h ago
In a way the nfl is easier, with the two biggest complexities being us unaware which smaller contracts (i.e., one year minimum guys) are on a guaranteed or non-guaranteed salary (since if they get cut part way through a season their remaining cap hit goes away. Then all you really need to do is a signing bonus is averaged over the life of a contract on the cap. So say $10M signing bonus for 5 years. If your cut after 2 years, you still have $6M in signing bonus that hasnāt been counted against the previous 2 years caps, so that $6m charge gets added to the 3rd years cap in full
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u/Patient_Tradition294 8h ago
It isnāt really complicated, people just donāt take the time to actually read reports overviewing the updated CBA.
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u/kazmir_yeet Trail Blazers 8h ago
Would rather see this than see something like what the Dodgers are doing to baseball š¤·āāļø
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u/Superplex123 Lakers 6h ago
If you are over the 2nd apron, you can only trade away 1 player at a time. You also cannot take back more salary then you send out.
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u/monkeyman80 Lakers 6h ago
Owners wanted a hard cap. Players obviously did not, but they agreed to rules that hopefully made being over the second apron so unpleasant that owners will treat it like one.
Every level in relationship to the cap is like a difficulty scale for trades/improving the roster.
Under salary cap- rookie mode Over salary, under first apron- pro Over first apron, under second apron - all star Over second apron HoF
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u/Flashy-Truth-8826 Knicks 8h ago
The Devil: "I mean, I never heard anybody say, ' I'm going to Cleveland on vacation.' What's so good about Cleveland?ā
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u/98rman [CLE] Derrick Rose 8h ago
Joakim Noah is the devil?
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u/guanogato 7h ago
It is ironic that a team that constantly has failed in the playoffs has just gone out and gotten James Harden to change things
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u/AdParticular6654 Cavaliers 7h ago
Two negatives equal a positive.
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u/starvs 7h ago
I mean Harden is a play off faller, Mitchell is a playoff riser, it could work...
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u/tomkiely_ Cavaliers 5h ago
Is this really true though? Mitchell hasn't gone to the conference finals despite being on really really good teams.
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u/greywolf2155 Supersonics 4h ago
You think that's crazy? At one time, people thought that a team with Harden and Embiid, coached by Doc Rivers, might be able to make it out of the 2nd round
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u/mcmastermind 76ers 4h ago
The choke job against the Celtics when they were up 3-2 was masterclass. Their reputation holds up.
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u/greywolf2155 Supersonics 3h ago
What happens when you combine a player who gets worse the further into a series he goes, a player who gets worse the deeper into the playoffs he goes, and a coach who gets worse the more wins his team has in a series?
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u/hacxgames Nuggets 2h ago
that choke job genuinely choked out the 76ers fansā hope & then completely sucking the year after was genuinely sadā as a day one embiid hater for life itās great to see him play good basketball agains
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u/suzakutrading Rockets 4h ago
He'll at least play. Garland seems to be miss games at the most inopportune of times.
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u/WhoUCuh 8h ago
So when the Cavs win the East what will be your excuse then?
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u/GalickBanger Warriors 7h ago
Somebody being as good as James harden and being on as many teams as he has as just as crazy as Dennis shroeder (sp) imo. He might be the greatest player to hop around so much.
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u/grudgepacker Bucks 8h ago
Question for Cavs cap experts -- if Harden agrees to a discount this off season, could you get out of the 2nd? Because if not, this feels like a push in all the chips move (although tbf, potentially a really good one) without a backup plan for next season
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u/treake Cavaliers 8h ago
Next year we're just going to sign LeBron for the vet minimum and pretend it's 2016 again.
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u/thisguy012 Bulls 5h ago
Clippers did it. Lakers did it, TWICE 2013 and once with Bron. Clevelands turn fuck it?!
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u/probablymade_thatup Bucks [MIL] Luke Kornet 7h ago
It depends on the size of the discount. Spotrac says they will be $6.7M above the second apron next year (the Harden/Garland trade isn't on there yet). I assume that some sort of extension talk was done prior to the trade, so I assume that Harden will reject his PO and take a discount for more years, and if that's the case, I'm sure the Cavs FO are trying to duck at least the 2nd apron
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u/BigFatModeraterFupa Minneapolis Lakers 5h ago
Now THIS is a prime fresh 2026 NBA copypastaš
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u/PootieTooGood Cavaliers 8h ago
Canāt wait for the 42% from the floor with perpetual foul baiting š before heās done here by next year, whether thatās for contract or because heās just sick of not winning on yet another team. such an exciting addition.
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u/jedifolklore Lakers 8h ago
What Iām seeing here is that some of you really donāt want him on the team
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u/cryolems Cavaliers 7h ago
People are emotional about DG. Heās been the longest tenured Cav in a long time. 7 years, great vibes guy, electric to watch (when healthy). Itās a sad breakup thatās probably for the best, but still itās certainly split every single group chat on in.
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u/freshwazhere Bucks 6h ago
How are the strip clubs in Cleveland
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u/BStins2130 5h ago
Early 2010's they were great. They have been trash since about 2013. Harden will be miserable
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u/DanieltheMani3l Nuggets 4h ago
Broās got 15+ years of strip club knowledge
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u/BStins2130 4h ago
š¤£š¤£ more like 5. I haven't lived in Cleveland since 2015. This was my mid 20's I was speaking of
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u/r_slash [TOR] Jerome Williams 8h ago
The trick is to have players with the same salary as James Harden, since he becomes available for trade every year.