The Celtics and the New CBA

[BitterJim]

Not a big change, but I wonder how these changes will effect teams who have rights to players that are overseas or no longer in the league. In the past the obvious choice for over-the-cap has been to just keep them in case they come in handy later (since there was no downside to having extra holds, and teams have used those rights in trades when they don't want to give up any actual asset)

Those holds could now push you over the $17.5m threshold, though, so we could see teams purging those rights in the next few years, which is a little sad.

[Moranis]

Is Jaylen more or less likely to make All-NBA next season if its positionless?

I think the games played is a bigger deal than positionless.  I think positionless will help (assuming next year's field mirrors this year's) with no worries about people leaving Jaylen off their ballot because they considered him a guard but ranked him 7th-8th there but had him above the 5th-6th ranked forwards or vice versa.

While some will argue guard is deeper, and so positionless will hurt Jaylen, I would use All-Star voting as a proxy for now, where Jaylen finished #2 in media voting for Eastern conference backcourt.  Seems he has the voter's respect.

Games played is going to be the bigger help I think.  If these new voting rules were implemented this year, it would mean LeBron, AD, Lillard, Durant, Kawhi, Curry, Halliburton, Morant, Irving, Booker, Harden, George, JJJ all won't be eligible, and I expect this pool of players to get a decent chunk of votes.

That leaves: Jokic, Embiid, Giannis, Tatum, Doncic, Butler, SGA, Sabonis, Randle, Markkanen, Fox, Edwards, Mitchell, Young, Garland, Brunson, Lavine, Siakim, Bam, Bridges, DeRozan, and a couple of others I'm probably overlooking.  I like Jaylen's odds to be in the top 15 against this pool of ~20-25 players.

Of course, next year's pool will be different.  Some people not in the conversation this year could be there next year (Ball, Zion, Ingram, Banchero, Wembanyama, Holmgren, etc.), others could be healthier (Curry, Lillard, Durant, Morant, Booker, etc.), but some current healthy people will get injured and/or decline while others might leapfrog Jaylen.  Next year, Jaylen will probably be ranked somewhere in the 15-30 best players in the NBA (ESPN had him #22 before the start of this season); Jaylen healthy, C's winning, and a normal distribution of missed games among the top players in the league is what will help Jaylen the most I think.


Inadvertently, the new rules might help Jaylen make it this year.  I'm sure there's voters on the fence if they should vote for guys like LeBron, George, Curry, Morant, Lillard, thinking to themselves, did this player play enough games?  Now that the threshold has been established, it will  be easier for them to justify that this player did not play enough games to get a vote.  Will be interested to see if impacts voters.  LeBron got 169 points last year playing 56 games, will end up somewhere between 51-55 this year.  Let's see if his votes drop off significantly.

Yeah games played will be a bigger factor, but this year I think it would hurt him as there are a lot of guards that aren't going to make it this year, that would be at least in the range of Brown, if not better. 

The games though might eliminate Jaylen as he isn't exactly a picture of health only playing in 66 games last year and 66 thus far this year (so max 70).  And basically every year as a starter, Brown has missed double digit games.