Jaylen Brown Agrees to extension

[green_bballers13]

Keith Smith:

Brown’s new contract is for five years and will start at 35% of the salary cap in the 2024-25 season. There are no options in the deal. His contract includes a trade bonus for the lesser of 7% of his salary or $7 million.

Unlike Brown’s current deal, there are no incentives in this contract. Brown will make the full 35% of the cap in 2024-25, with the maximum 8% raises in the following seasons. Brown’s current contract with Boston is ladened with several different incentives related to individual and team success. This one is for the maximum that Brown could get, without any bonuses involved.

The deal has been reported as being for $304 million over five years. For that to be the total number, Brown would need to start at about $52.4 million in first-year salary. That assumes the salary cap will again jump by the maximum possible 10%. However, it’s not quite that simple.

The NBA’s current projection for the 2024-25 salary cap is $142 million. That’s a modest 4.4% bump. The reason for this lower-than-expected projection is that there is considerable uncertainty within the Bally Regional Sports Network system that carries the games for about half of the NBA’s teams. The NBA is baking in some potential losses due to the bankruptcy of the Bally RSN’s parent company Diamond Sports.

Now, the cap may very well end up jumping by 10%, but that’s not what the NBA is currently projecting. Therefore, we are basing Jaylen Brown’s extension off the actual projection of a cap of $142 million.

That makes the projection for Brown’s Designated Veteran Extension as five years, $288,260,000, with a first-year salary of $49,700,000.

https://www.spotrac.com/news/breaking-down-jaylen-browns-extension-1974/

And for those thinking a $50 million contract is bad:

We’re not that far off from the NBA salary cap reaching above $200 million in a single season. At the current projected growth, we’ll get there by the 2028-29 season. When we do, the maximum salary for a player with 10-plus years or service or for a Designated Veteran Player will be $72.7 million.

$72.7 million in first-year salary and $422 million over a five-year max deal. The final salary in that contract? $96 million. Nearly $100 million for a single season. Whew boy!

Commoners (like myself) are never going to get used to seeing the top earners in any profession get compensated for their "market value". I actually think athletes are more fairly compensated than failing CEO's collecting golden parachutes and other corporate governance nightmares. Jaylen's contract details hit the press hot, but we care less about executive comp at First Republic Bank or Advanced Auto Parts.

As far as JB being the highest paid NBA player- not for long. Tatum will eventually yield more, as will the other young top players. Luka and Trae are going to receive an enormous amount of money to play 1/2 the court. I know JB's contract is rich, and I know he wasn't first team all defense last year, but I feel a lot more comfortable with JB than many of these other young guys.

[cman88]

I have a feeling that unless something changes, the new CBA and these max/supermax contracts are going to collide in a way that the stars will make big money and the middle-ground players may end up getting squeezed in the market.  obviously not all of them, but there will be guys who have to take below market deals because teams wont want to spend big money to bring them in (or money that will put them over a certain apron) and their options may be limited.

and fans who say it wont happen only need to look at the NFL where you see Qb's now making over $40million a year if you are just average and any star wide receiver makes over $20million. meanwhile guys like top running backs getting peanuts. Teams in the league as a whole will find a way to prioritize what they feel are important positions to winning. and sometimes that is at the expense of other talented guys.

unless the idea is teams without a max/supermax player will overpay mid-tier players. but if I am one of those teams why do I do that? I want to be bad enough to get a good pick and draft one of those top tier guys. I don't want to create a team of overpaid mid-tier players that can win me enough games to lose a top pick.

[Kernewek]

Considering that the 'big money contracts' are a byproduct of the NBA salary cap, and that the league ownership is pretty obviously trying to push parity by making it prohibitively expensive to keep more than 2 players on 35% of the cap contracts (to discourage superteams), I don't see a meaningful difference between this CBA and the last one on that front for the mid-level players.

If, anything the big loss to the NBA middle class is the cap smoothing that's been implemented, but even then that's just one group of guys who would have been in the right place at the right time.

[Vermont Green]

Considering that the 'big money contracts' are a byproduct of the NBA salary cap, and that the league ownership is pretty obviously trying to push parity by making it prohibitively expensive to keep more than 2 players on 35% of the cap contracts (to discourage superteams), I don't see a meaningful difference between this CBA and the last one on that front for the mid-level players.

If, anything the big loss to the NBA middle class is the cap smoothing that's been implemented, but even then that's just one group of guys who would have been in the right place at the right time.

I think you said exactly why it is different and going to impact the good, but not max players.   Before, a team like GSW could overpay to resign their own players, like Wiggins.  They had to pay tax, but the other penalties did not exist.  Now, all they could offer Wiggins is the MLE.  I see this as absolutely stratifying player salaries.  Most teams are going to have 2 max, a couple of MLE (taxpayer or non-taxpayer), and then all vet min or rookies.  So if you are not quite good enough for a max contract, maybe you get an MLE, but you could end up with nothing more than a vet min.

[Kernewek]

I should clarify, when I'm talking about mid-level, I am talking about mid-level contracts, rather than player skill or 'value'.

Edit: Wiggins is an interesting example, because compared to his current contract he's already taken a pay cut to sign a longer deal with Golden State (after making 33 million this last season, he'll go down to $24m. in the upcoming 23-24 season, roughly 18% of the cap) - although his agent did get him a player option in the final year.

[Vermont Green]

I should clarify, when I'm talking about mid-level, I am talking about mid-level contracts, rather than player skill or 'value'.

Edit: Wiggins is an interesting example, because compared to his current contract he's already taken a pay cut to sign a longer deal with Golden State (after making 33 million this last season, he'll go down to $24m. in the upcoming 23-24 season, roughly 18% of the cap) - although his agent did get him a player option in the final year.

A lot depends on how much the cap goes up (but 35% of cap will go up too).  I think you will see this in a player like Derrick White.  In the "old days" most teams would have just extended him with whatever raise you could offer, tax be-[dang]ed.  Certainly GSW would have.  They overpaid Poole for example.  Now, if you already have two max contracts, you will have to look at a player like Derrick White a little more discerningly.  White is a player who is never going to get a max deal and if he is on the market as a UFA, he may not get more than the MLE, like Grant.  Overpays to resign/extend not max players like Herro and Poole, I just don't see them happening anymore.  Which is probably exactly what league had in mind.

[vjcsmoke]

304 million dollars is too much for Brown.  He's not a 60m dollar per year player in terms of talent.  However those are the terms of the collective bargaining agreement supermax.  The Celtics didn't have a choice but to overpay to keep him.

Hopefully in a couple of years 60m will be seen as the norm, then this deal won't look as bad in hindsight.

[cman88]

304 million dollars is too much for Brown.  He's not a 60m dollar per year player in terms of talent.  However those are the terms of the collective bargaining agreement supermax.  The Celtics didn't have a choice but to overpay to keep him.

Hopefully in a couple of years 60m will be seen as the norm, then this deal won't look as bad in hindsight.

its been a month and already Brown is not the highest paid player anymore since Anthony davis is getting 62million a year.  And take into account hes older and more injury prone

so this clearly is going to be the norm.

[BitterJim]

304 million dollars is too much for Brown.  He's not a 60m dollar per year player in terms of talent.  However those are the terms of the collective bargaining agreement supermax.  The Celtics didn't have a choice but to overpay to keep him.

Hopefully in a couple of years 60m will be seen as the norm, then this deal won't look as bad in hindsight.

its been a month and already Brown is not the highest paid player anymore since Anthony davis is getting 62million a year.  And take into account hes older and more injury prone

so this clearly is going to be the norm.

Brown is only the "highest paid" in the sense that his contract has the largest total value, so he still beats out AD after that extension. Brown isn't even top 5 in salary for any year of his extension except the last two, where there's almost no one else under contract. And I'm sure there'll be plenty of bigger contracts before we reach that point, so he's never a top 5 salary in any season under this contract.

[Celtics2021]

304 million dollars is too much for Brown.  He's not a 60m dollar per year player in terms of talent.  However those are the terms of the collective bargaining agreement supermax.  The Celtics didn't have a choice but to overpay to keep him.

Hopefully in a couple of years 60m will be seen as the norm, then this deal won't look as bad in hindsight.

its been a month and already Brown is not the highest paid player anymore since Anthony davis is getting 62million a year.  And take into account hes older and more injury prone

so this clearly is going to be the norm.

Brown is only the "highest paid" in the sense that his contract has the largest total value, so he still beats out AD after that extension. Brown isn't even top 5 in salary for any year of his extension except the last two, where there's almost no one else under contract. And I'm sure there'll be plenty of bigger contracts before we reach that point, so he's never a top 5 salary in any season under this contract.

Indeed.  Next year he’s currently projected to be in a 3-way tie for the 7th highest salary with Booker and Towns, and the following year there’s a very good chance he’s outside of the top 10.  By the time we get to the latter years of his contract that people are so concerned about, he very likely will be outside the top 20 in salary.