Please help me understand, people have been saying we can't have 2 Max contracts with Brown and Tatum. Can't afford to put players around them. But, The Sixers have Embiid, max contract guarantees him $299.5 million. Maxey locked into a five-year, $204 million rookie-scale maximum. V. J. Edgecombe will get a Max deal, Brown has a Max. I just don't understand?? Can someone who really know the ins and outs of this explain why the Celtics can't afford to build around the J's but the Sixers can with their stars and JB??
To me, won't the same thing be happening with the Spurs?? Wemby-Max, Castle-will get Max, Fox-just signed Max, Dylan Harper will want a Max!!!
How can They keep that team together? This is where I struggle to understand the new CBA?
Please someone help me out with this so it makes sense, Thank you in advance!
I'll try to explain it so it doesn't get too confusing. Basically you have a salary cap, which this year is $
165m. Once you exceed it you can't sign any new free agents, except extending or re-signing your own. That's the first constraint.
Most teams exceed this unless they are tanking, because the NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement sets the maximum amount a player can earn based on how long they have been in the league, as well as whether they are an All-Star or All-NBA for certain years. In general the bands are:
0-6 years - up to 25% of the cap, 7-9 years up to 30%, and 10+ years 35% (there are exceptions based on performance that allow some to earn higher than their years of service or have extra years but that's the general gist of it). A 30% of the cap contract is a "max" and a 35% a supermax. Jaylen and Jayson are on supermaxes, around $55m each (it goes up each year as the salary cap goes up) so they both take up 70% of the cap. That's more than half the cap on 2 players.
Then the next threshold is the luxury tax, which this year is $
200m. If you exceed the tax line, you pay tax on the amount over, in a proportional system similar to income tax, and the proceeds are distributed to teams below the tax. Every year you stay above the tax, the marginal tax rate goes up exponentially, from
300% to 350% to 400% to 575% and higher. So that's the second constraint. Teams that want to contend, like we did, go over this tax line because they have no choice but to pay their players, like we did with KP, Jrue, White, Al and then all the other players we had. If we hadn't got rid of them we would have been facing a $250m+ tax bill last year and even higher this year.
The third threshold is the first apron, which this year is at $
209m. The first apron introduces roster building penalties, such as having to match salaries within 110% (teams below can match at $125%), not being able to acquire players in sign and trade if they cause the team to go over the first apron, and not being able to sign waived players above the cost of the non-taxpayer MLE. To keep it simple, they start to make it harder for you to do trades, rather than just penalizing you financially.
The fourth, and most punitive threshold, is the second apron, which this year is at $
221m. Exceeding this, like we did in 2024-25, introduces the most restrictive penalties, such as not being able to aggregate salaries in a trade, can't use cash in trades, can't use trade exceptions from previous years, can't access the MLE to sign free agents, draft picks 7 years out are frozen, and moving your draft pick to the very end if you stay above the 2nd apron for too long.
So how can Philly afford Jaylen? Because a) Jaylen technically cost the same per season as PG13 ($57m), and Philly's owner (Josh Harris) has been religious about keeping the team below the luxury tax. That's why they traded away Jared McCain last season. Also they have a very top heavy team, with Embiid at $57m, PG13 (now Jaylen) at $57m, and Maxey at $40m (he is on a max because he has less than 10+ years of experience). So their Big 3 is costing them $154m. Since they are trying to stay below the luxury tax, that leaves them $43m to spend on the other 12 players on their roster. Which is why after Edgecombe who is on his rookie deal ($11m) the rest of the team is on vet mins. You can see their roster here:
(click to enlarge)
So if Philly want to build around Embiid and JB and Maxey, they will have to exceed the luxury tax and probably the first apron, and maybe the 2nd apron to sign the supporting cast they need, like we did back in 2023-24. But since it's so punitive to stay up there, teams can only really exceed it during their championship window - the days of living up there and just paying tax like the Warriors did during their dynasty days are over. So when time comes to extend JB, Philly is going to have to ask the same questions that Brad probably asked himself - is JB worth it? Is he worth taking up 35% of the cap? Maybe by then Embiid will have retired so his 35% can be replaced by JB's. In any case if you get it wrong, it's very difficult to undo - think about what the Suns had to do when they shipped out KD and had to eat Beal's contract with a buyout. So these days teams tend to err on the side of ending their window early than late, because trying to get rid of players who have declined in value is very difficult. (Except for the Sixers with PG13 since we bailed them out
)
So relating it back to us, when Tatum got injured, Brad and the front office and ownership probably made a determination that they weren't winning the championship this season, so there was no point paying $250m in tax in addition to $250m in payroll for a non-contending team. So he traded away KP (for peanuts in return) and Jrue and let Al and Luke walk. That's why we have these large trade exceptions, because we've been shipping out salary without taking any back.
But there's nothing that says you can't have two, or even three, max contracts...but if you do, you better make sure they bring you to a championship, and you better have some overperforming rookies and vet mins making up the rest of the roster. It's a high risk bet because the cost of undoing it is very costly, in terms of having to give up draft picks to take on salary of declining players.
Hope that makes sense.
Topic: How Can the Sixers afford JB? (Read 280 times)