More than ever before in history, the general public is aware of the business side of the NBA. They understand that the development of the second apron has already devastated a few teams. The Boston Celtics are the most recent team to suffer the financial implications of a roster with a heavy payroll. It is being speculated that the Oklahoma City Thunder will be the next domino to fall despite being the defending NBA champion.
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Former Washington Wizards star Gilbert Arenas isn’t a big fan of the league’s cap situation.
The Thunder made sure to pay their big three of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams. Luckily, Williams and Holmgren’s extensions won’t activate until the 2026-27 NBA season. Unfortunately, when that time comes, Thunder general manager Sam Presti will have some tough decisions to make.
OKC won’t be able to keep some of the core players they currently have strictly due to finances. Their future will feature a lot of turnaround with the surrounding pieces to the star trio. This is an unfortunate reality for a team like the Thunder, which has made all the right draft selections and built its team from the ground up.
Gilbert Arenas offers a potential solution that will fix this problem for the 30 NBA teams.
“I should be able to build my team,” Arenas said on No Chill. “If you’re going to penalize, penalize teams that didn’t draft their players.”
Now, initially, the second apron was introduced to prevent another incident, such as Kevin Durant joining the Golden State Warriors, from happening again. In that regard, it can be considered a success. However, teams that have built their squads organically are the ones to suffer since they can’t afford to retain all of their young stars.
Under Arenas’ proposed plan, a team like the Celtics would fall under the worthy penalized umbrella since they acquired core members such as Derrick White, Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis outside of the draft.
At least the Celtics were pushing to win. Typically, to win in the NBA, it costs money. The Thunder are an anomaly, being a championship team while under the luxury tax. It’ll be fairly difficult for other teams to replicate that type of formula.
Besides, many teams don’t want to pay that money. Arenas uses Philadelphia 76ers legend Allen Iverson as the perfect example of a player caught in the middle of the business of the NBA.
“If you’re Allen Iverson and he’s saying, ‘Look, I got our team to the Finals with this roster. All I need is one more piece.’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, but do we want to pay this player $20 million? You sell all the seats. What is he going to sell?'” Arenas said.
The mindset of NBA owners has become more apparent to the masses. The Indiana Pacers lost Myles Turner over their reluctance to give him a contract he desired following an NBA Finals appearance. It was all because they didn’t want to go deep into the luxury tax.
“Now, for the first time, you get to see the business of basketball. You literally get to watch it in real time. They are penalizing teams that want to win and stack their rosters,” Arenas proclaimed.
Until the league finds a middle ground, this will continue to be a problem. More great young teams will break it up sooner than they should. The unfortunate reason will not be centred around the core aspect of sports, which is winning, but money.
