So what exactly does recent tampering mean? should do it Configure tampering? And how will the league’s actions on that front in the coming weeks and months change the future of free agency?
In an ongoing investigation, Philadelphia 76ers When new york knicksfollowing last year’s penalties miami heat When chicago bulls Each costs a draft pickit’s time to dig deeper into this issue and where the red line is.
Let’s start from the top. Basically, there are three types of tampering.
The first is the most despicable kind that anyone thinks of when the word “tampering” comes up. A team blatantly contacts another team’s player about future employment, either directly or through an intermediary, while that team’s season is still underway.
Obviously, there are shades of gray here. You are allowed to talk to other humans. For example, players always know people who work on other teams and chat with each other before matches in those cities. Nearly everyone who works on the team’s side agrees that the punishment for this transgression isn’t too medieval.
The NBA has launched an investigation into the 76ers’ early contact and possible tampering. @rich_hofmann.
The investigation is focused on the 76er’s free agency deals with James Harden, PJ Tucker and Danuel House.https://t.co/1Jbu7C9vAV
— Athletic NBA (@TheAthleticNBA) July 30, 2022
So many people are watching with great interest League Rules for Knicks Recruiting of Jalen Brunson In Dallas, some of these lines may have crossed.
The issue is not just one of guilt or innocence, but one of how severe the resulting punishment will be. Will the league continue its recent pattern of penalizing teams? That seems like a pretty weak source when talking about getting star talent for free.
Or does the league want to pursue tougher enforcement penalties? NBA Executive suspensions and fines, first-round draft losses, and other draconian relief measures have been eased, but in practice we have yet to see any of these measures. You can also disable signatures. In practice, the way the free agent market works, this is unacceptable.
The Branson-esque falsification is the first thing fans think of. But the league is probably equally interested in two other types, both of which are relevant to the current investigation into the 76ers. It’s more interesting.
The first of these two tampering categories is probably better called “cap avoidance” rather than “tampering”. Nonetheless, the league technically views it as the latter, as it involves signing potential free agents to future contracts. This is illegal under the league’s collective bargaining agreement (CBA).
The problem in this case is that the Sixers agreed to pay James Harden $33 million for next season…after he opted out of a $47 million contract. This allowed the Sixers to sign PJ Tucker And Danuel House signed a free agency deal and is still below the luxury tax apron.
The implication of the investigation is that Harden did not voluntarily transfer his $14 million fortune to his two former former partners. rocket teammates (seems unimaginable especially for a given house how it endedI’m told Harden didn’t speak to House for months afterward) and instead reduced his current salary and exchanged promises of future payments. doing. Harden could re-sign with Philadelphia a year from now, potentially paying a five-year maximum worth $270 million, but his 32-year-old season in 2021 showed he Based on the decline, even well below that figure could be an overpayment. -twenty two.
While this may seem like semantics to most fans, the league takes this type of cap avoidance very seriously. Consider a more egregious example (not saying this could happen, just providing a blatant cap avoidance scenario). lebron james I’ll play at least next season, lakers could sign two maximum free agents to join him, Anthony Davisthen reacquire the Bird rights for the full max deal a year later.
The problem for the league is that there may be no smoking guns here. The problem underlying most tampering cases is that proving it relies heavily on the clumsiness of the offending front office.in case of absence A signed consent form hidden in the deskthe only true smoking gun would be if Harden had a bad run in 2022-23 and the Sixers paid him big anyway…in which case the deal could be a bigger penalty than the league office can do. There is a possibility
The interesting thing here is that if the league is looking at Harden’s case, would it want to look at other cases that hinted at similar winks and nods for future payouts? , which smells like sardines, is a Nic Batum-like arrangement. clippers Also Bobby Portis‘ with Bucks.
Each signed a one-year contract to stay with their respective team in 2021 at below market value and re-signed at his maximum allowable salary via early bird rights (Batum for $22 million over two years, Portis for four years). $49 million in ). These are not the only examples of such deals. Recent chronicles offer other examples of what might be fishy or an innocuous consequence of circumstances. Well, that misses the point, the question is whether promises of future payments made that possibility more viable, rather than denying more money elsewhere today .)
One interesting takeaway from Harden’s research is where leagues are interested in drawing the line. I’m not sure people in the league are that upset about the type of contract Batum and Portis signed.
People are interested in how the league will handle the Knicks recruiting Jalen Brunson from Dallas. (Andy Merlin/USA Today)
On the other hand, especially in Miami, than that The Sixers are upset about Harden’s deal. Although the Heat could have evaluated the market heading into the offseason and reasonably believed they could keep Tucker at $8.4 million a year (the maximum the Heat can afford without incurring a luxury tax apron). , did not expect Harden’s $14 million salary cut. The Sixers allowed Tucker to start at $10.49 million a year.
Speaking of Miami, it’s the last type of tampering. This is versatility when the Bulls and Heat draft his picks a year before him, and the Bucks that year before him. Considering how quickly rumors of Tucker leaving for Philadelphia emerged, it could cost the Sixers as well.
Frankly, this kind of tampering is the least offensive for most executives. If you polled them, the general consensus would be, “What the hell did they want us to do?” BREAKING: Free agency is 90% complete by the time it is said to begin. Nearly every significant player has announced a deal within his first 36 hours this year. Arguably, many of these announcements still limped to provide a plausible cover for their denials.
Note that this is a recent change and it wasn’t always like this. When I started working in Memphis, the players wanted to spend the first few days of free agency meeting with the team and especially enjoying wine and food with the superstars. These dominoes needed to be toppled first, slowing the overall pace of free agency. There was usually enough time to do things more or less up-and-down.
Over the course of my seven seasons Grizzliesit has fundamentally changed and the pattern has only gotten worse. Towards the middle of the last decade, one prominent agent in particular has been doing very well for mid-tier players if they negotiate before the starter’s pistol blasts. Other agents quickly followed suit, realizing they could get a deal.
Meanwhile, players stopped worrying about meetings and spent a lot of time thinking about how to team up with each other. Flashy PowerPoint, this is the jersey, this is our coach’s spiel about how he uses you. So you can see that we are serious. It now seems like a quaint relic of a bygone era.
As far as I know, there hasn’t been a full-fledged recruitment meeting like this since. Gordon Hayward‘s Miami and Boston tours, and Clipper for Life’s Blake Griffin summit with LA, both in 2017. Chris Paul Changed the landscape a year later by telling the Clippers he was going to Houston before free agency started. Now, if teams wait until 6 p.m. on June 30 to contact potential free agents, he’s ruining a party that’s already over.
This makes it difficult to ascertain the league’s current stance on this kind of tampering. At this time, we describe this policy as ‘do not disgrace’. If you want to wrap up free agency on June 27th, so be it, but keep it low-key. (or a few days before that, in the odd case of Bogdan Bogdanovic.)
Nevertheless, the league’s stance in all three areas still looks evolving. Despite the well-intentioned rules on paper, they remain too vague in practice. These rules have become even more important over the last 50 years as free agency turned into the speed round of the game of chairs. It is no longer realistic for teams to operate within the terms of the law.
Therefore, the implications from both the Sixers’ and Knicks’ cases will have important implications for how the teams do their free-agent business in the coming seasons.
I can only hope that the conclusions and precedents the league has set from these investigations are clear enough to make everyone aware of the future course and costs. Currently we are still speculating.
(Top photo of James Harden and PJ Tucker: Michael Reeves/Getty Images)
