The problem with the NBA’s second apron

The NBA’s second apron has to go.

It won’t, though, because the league likes what it does.

The second apron, set at $221,686,000 for the 2026-27 season, effectively works as a hard salary cap. Exceed that figure, and team-building essentially becomes impossible, because the restrictions are so severe on a franchise’s ability to operate in the draft, free agency and trade markets — all the ways in which an organization can improve its roster.

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It has become the talking point in the NBA, as tanking and load management have before it, and that’s never a good thing, whenever we lose focus on the basketball itself. Many of the summer’s biggest plotlines directly result from the entrapments of the second apron.

Because all you can do to get out of it, really, is sell off pieces one at a time, as the 2024 NBA champion Boston Celtics did, trading Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porziņģis, letting Al Horford and Luke Kornet walk in free agency, and, finally, moving on from Jaylen Brown.

The Jaylen Brown-Jayson Tatum era is over in Boston, just two years after a title run. (Photo by Danielle Parhizkaran/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)

(Boston Globe via Getty Images)

“The path looked a little bit more challenging with 70% of our cap and such a high percentage of our usage tied into two players,” Celtics executive Brad Stevens said at a recent press availability, referencing maximum contracts for Brown and Jayson Tatum.

Isn’t that the crux of this issue? If a team cannot sustain itself with two homegrown players who have earned every penny of their max salaries — who have formed the foundation of a championship team — isn’t there something wrong with the model?

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Do we want an NBA where Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, or any successful homegrown tandem, can no longer play a good chunk of their primes together?

There is an easy fix to this, of course. The NBA could simply allow homegrown max-salaried players to make 35% of the salary cap while only counting 30% against it.

But that is not what NBA commissioner Adam Silver wants.

“It’s certainly not unintended consequence,” Silver told reporters…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/the-problem-with-the-nbas-second-apron-204009360.html

Author : Ben Rohrbach

Publish date : 2026-07-15 20:40:00

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