Bucks F Kyle Kuzma “aired out his grievances” with the NBA’s current CBA and warned that the NBPA “has to be prepared for the next CBA negotiations,” according to Mike Vorkunov of THE ATHLETIC. Kuzma on X wrote, “The first and second apron are starting to function like a hard cap on player value, team continuity, and player movement.” He added, “The owners and the league walk into these meetings with killers that continue to run circles around us time and time again. ... Players deserve a PA that is just as sharp, just as prepared, and just as aggressive about protecting our upside.” Vorkunov noted the league and owners “pushed for a hard cap” during the negotiations that led to the 2023 deal that set the current apron system. Some team execs and agents have considered the second apron, set at just under $222M this coming season, as a “de facto hard cap since its inception.” Only the Cavaliers had a total payroll that exceeded the second apron during the 2025-26 season. Knicks owner James Dolan four days after his team won the 2026 championship said that a team “would have to be ‘suicidal’ to go over the second-apron threshold.” Kuzma wrote, “Teams are no longer making purely basketball decisions. They’re making fear-based apron decisions. That means good players get squeezed, homegrown cores get broken up, fan-favorite teams lose their identity, and the overall product loses some of the nostalgia and continuity that made people fall in love with the NBA” (THE ATHLETIC, 7/3).
BILL WAS DUE: In Boston, Gary Washburn wrote F Jaylen Brown’s contract was a “factor” in why the Celtics “were so eager” to trade him to the 76ers. NBA teams are “beginning to pass on signing veterans to cap-limiting extensions.” Brown was eligible for a two-year, $141M extension later this month and with Celtcis F Jayson Tatum eligible for a similar deal next summer, the Celtics did “not want two players with max deals if it wasn’t a championship formula.” What the new CBA has done is “discourage teams from drafting well, especially players who are close in age and experience.” Brown and Tatum were drafted third in consecutive years, meaning the two, if they “became All-Stars and All-NBA players, were going to garner similar contracts throughout their careers” (BOSTON GLOBE, 7/4).
