Wemby: here's only 1 way we do this, we don't take Maxes

[baseline bum]

I don't think so because they won't offer max ~20% contracts to role players when three max extensions kick in.

I'm gonna laugh when the Lakers sign Dort to a 15-20% of the cap offer after they miss out on Giannis and Jokic, as apparently they're trying to clear capspace for 2027.

[LeBowen]

I'm gonna laugh when the Lakers sign Dort to a 15-20% of the cap offer after they miss out on Giannis and Jokic, as apparently they're trying to clear capspace for 2027.

I don't think Presti will let anyone walk, he's too obsessed with generating assets and getting the most value out of everything.

The thing I forgot to mention about this CBA is that it's difficult because teams are still operating with contracts signed before the changes happened.
As we've seen over ther past week, there are no more overpays for role players.
We need to wait for 2 or 3 more years untill new CBA contracts take over before we start claiming it's a good or bad thing for the league.

[Frenchfred]

should you demand a lower salary to keep your co-workers?



the only reason you are saying this is because you won't ever see that type of money in your life. Guaranteed if somebody offered you 10k right now to do that, you'd take the 10k and run with it.

A $100,000 and a $50 millions salaries are the same, yeah right I can tell you that I have given a lot of money to help people and I don't make 50 million a year.

[TekXX]

about half of all NBA players are broke 5 years after retiring. Sit down old man.

Wemby is a mature guy, he's not going to lose his money like a dumb American from the South.

[baseline bum]

I don't think Presti will let anyone walk, he's too obsessed with generating assets and getting the most value out of everything.

The thing I forgot to mention about this CBA is that it's difficult because teams are still operating with contracts signed before the changes happened.
As we've seen over ther past week, there are no more overpays for role players.
We need to wait for 2 or 3 more years untill new CBA contracts take over before we start claiming it's a good or bad thing for the league.

I think it'll be a situation where the Lakers have capspace and have to spend it somewhere.

[scott]

Except no. The owners have alteady made their stance clear when they negotiated a CBA that makes it extremely difficult to choose to spend more. Can teams choose to triple their payroll to win? Maybe but for some that is financially impossible and for most it's not tenable. Players now have to make their choice given the reality that was negotiated by their representation. Whether they want to get the most they can on a team where they might be the only star or agree to take less and have other co-stars. This isn't a rubber-glue thing where the owners can get the same choice reversed on them. They're clearly okay with a new team winning every year. The question now is if star players are.

I'm pro-player, but owners going deep into the tax doesn't actually give the players anymore money. If anything, it's just a justification for smaller teams to spend less and avoid going into the tax due to how big the payouts are.

Disagree.

Most NBA teams have between 300 and 400 million total revenue (last available figures for 2024). You can’t say teams having to pay in excess of the total revenue for player salaries only, so that they keep their team, should be a viable option or a choice. These companies aren’t just players, they have a lot of other personnel and workers who are inevitably affected by the bottomline.

Just keep on sucking down that “star players should take less” juice guys. Maybe the owners will eventually do something nice for you.

[KDKSpurs24]

It actually makes sense to take less in multiple respects. First, you can’t take it with you; what difference does it make if you die with $300 million or $200 million in the bank?

Second, you could be a rich all-time legend or slightly richer and mostly forgotten.

Third, there’s decent a chance you could make a lot of it back and then some; successful championship teams (and players) should get far more notoriety and endorsements, sometimes even after they retire.

GET REAL. You can’t take a championship with you either. I’m not trying to make this personal but do you not have a family? The way some of you are talking makes it sound more selfish than anything. A championship doesn’t mean more to me than generational wealth for my family. And I LOVE winning. But you know what? NOBODY cares about role player rings. That’s just a fact. The only rings that matter are the star player and MAYBE the 2nd option. I’m not leaving money on the table for a championship that’s NOT guaranteed. Especially when that means the rich owners get to keep it. A player can blow their Achilles out (or any other career ender) at any time and not be lucky enough to ever recover. Just like someone said, y’all are saying this kind of stuff because you will never see this type of money in your life. Easy to say. But I’m a realist and I know that anything can happen and I prefer my future family to have the money because life goes on after im dead and hardly anybody 50 years from now will stop and think “hey you remember that guy won NBA championships? He was a good player”. That doesn’t move me enough to take a damn pay cut.

[scott]

The CBA is designed to result in parity, but here some dumb fans are “well derrrr the players should just take less so the league can avoid the parity the CBA is designed to create”

The CBA is punitive so that keeping together a superteam becomes cost prohibitive… not so that owners can force the talent into taking cheaper deals in order to keep the superteam together. But once again, people (who clearly are not high earners themselves) fall for it every time. “Derrr, mah, I cud buy a years worth of Big Macs if I made just a fraction of these greedy players”

[BG_Spurs_Fan]

Just keep on sucking down that “star players should take less” juice guys. Maybe the owners will eventually do something nice for you.

Way to put words in people's mouths.

Star players should not take pay cuts. GMs should be smart when building a team, because this CBA is unforgiving when you make even a single mistake. Contending windows will be shorter, players will have to be moved, etc. No more having a big 3 for 10+ years.

[scott]

When any of you folks take a pay cut in a profitable workplace so that your company can hire better co-workers around you, let me know

[scott]

Way to put words in people's mouths.

Star players should not take pay cuts. GMs should be smart when building a team, because this CBA is unforgiving when you make even a single mistake. Contending windows will be shorter, players will have to be moved, etc. No more having a big 3 for 10+ years.

Star players taking pay cuts is the topic of this thread, bud. “No maxes” isn’t a discussion of how the going rate for role players has been impacted by the CBA

[BG_Spurs_Fan]

Star players taking pay cuts is the topic of this thread, bud.

And I don't believe I have supported this idea, have I? What I've said is that you can't expect teams to spend on players more than their total revenue. The notion doesn't sound weird to me, I dunno.

I'm sure you'll be very supportive of Fox's and Sochan's extensions.

[Chinook]

Just keep on sucking down that “star players should take less” juice guys. Maybe the owners will eventually do something nice for you.

You aren't being pro-player or anti-owner in your sentiments. As I said before, the players get the same amount of money no matter how big the payrolls get. The more a superstar gets for himself and his supporting cast, the less the rest of the players get back from escrow. Imagine if you were a sales person for a company, and your check started dropping because another company kept giving bigger bonuses to their top earners. That's what happens with superteams, not what you seem to think that owners as a whole have to pay a bunch of money and stars "get what they are worth". The financial beneficiaries of superteams are not "players". It's a handful of players on elite teams and the owners of poor teams who get a massive financial incentive to not pay the tax themselves.

The new CBA made it more likely that the Spurs can compete with their "humble" ownership, not less. The new rules mean fewer massive tax bills and thus less money coming back to teams ducking the tax, and the barrier for contending is lower because teams can't/won't stay deep into the tax to maintain it.

[scott]

And I don't believe I have supported this idea, have I? What I've said is that you can't expect teams to spend on players more than their total revenue. The notion doesn't sound weird to me, I dunno.

I'm sure you'll be very supportive of Fox's and Sochan's extensions.

Apologies if I interpreted your post (in response to mine) the wrong way in that case.

And sure I’ll be supportive of Fox and Sochan’s extensions, even if I think they are overpays. I’m supportive of Devin getting his bag, even as someone who sported an Anti-Dev avatar for most of the year. These are uniquely talented young men with a short window to maximize their personal earnings potential. They are also the part of the product that cannot be replaced without a drop off in the quality of the product. They’re the most important part of the product’s appeal, the most important driver of the value proposition. Those are the people I want to see well rewarded and compensated, across all walks of life.

If players want to take a pay cut to help the team, that’s cool and as a fan of a specific team I appreciate if a player does that for my team… but I’d never expect it and certainly would deride any player for not doing it. If the Spurs foolishly give Sochan a max extension tomorrow… I’ll say that was stupid by the Spurs but I’m not going to blame Jeremy for it and I’m certainly not going to call him greedy. He worked his ass off for his payday… these owners, for the most part, didn’t do to earn their seat at the head of the table other than win the genetic lottery.

[Gandalf]

GET REAL. You can’t take a championship with you either. I’m not trying to make this personal but do you not have a family? The way some of you are talking makes it sound more selfish than anything. A championship doesn’t mean more to me than generational wealth for my family.

You need to work on you reading comprehension, re-read the actual post you were responding to, and not make up straw-man arguments. Did I say minor role players should sacrifice everything for the team? No, I was clearly talking about major star players—e.g., ‘what’s the difference between dying with $200 MILLION in the bank vs. $300 MILLION.

Second, if you can’t ‘feed your family’ with $200 MILLION in the bank Mr. Sprewell, you should have raised a more responsible family—that’s actually way more important than just giving them $200 million, and you could (and should) have done both.

Third, no, you can’t literally take the championship or a ring with you, but it does generate a sort of historical immortality, a legend, for whatever time the world has left. I’ll also personally congratulate and thank Robinson for his championships in Heaven, even if they weren’t the most important thing in the grand scheme of things. In that sense, championships are more valuable than the relatively minor incremental difference between $200 million and $300 million—remember, we’re still talking about $200 MILLION in the bank, PLUS championships.

And again, my final point was that star players might even net around the same (or possibly even more) when you factor in the greater notoriety and associated sponsorships, etc. from being on a truly great championship team. Players like Jordan (whom Wemby wants to meet or exceed) continue to bank off of their names and reputations long after they retire.

[scott]

You aren't being pro-player or anti-owner in your sentiments. As I said before, the players get the same amount of money no matter how big the payrolls get. The more a superstar gets for himself and his supporting cast, the less the rest of the players get back from escrow. Imagine if you were a sales person for a company, and your check started dropping because another company kept giving bigger bonuses to their top earners. That's what happens with superteams, not what you seem to think that owners as a whole have to pay a bunch of money and stars "get what they are worth". The financial beneficiaries of superteams are not "players". It's a handful of players on elite teams and the owners of poor teams who get a massive financial incentive to not pay the tax themselves.

The new CBA made it more likely that the Spurs can compete with their "humble" ownership, not less. The new rules mean fewer massive tax bills and thus less money coming back to teams ducking the tax, and the barrier for contending is lower because teams can't/won't stay deep into the tax to maintain it.

Holy conflating the whole for the individual, Batman.

A star player does in fact, not get the same amount of money, by taking less money. But you are free to go offer your boss to cut your pay in half and spread it out amongst your immediate co-workers, since you’ll “get the same amount of money”

Players are individuals with agency, not some collective borg whose goal is to maximize their aggregate earnings.

[Chinook]

Way to put words in people's mouths.

Star players should not take pay cuts. GMs should be smart when building a team, because this CBA is unforgiving when you make even a single mistake. Contending windows will be shorter, players will have to be moved, etc. No more having a big 3 for 10+ years.

There's a difference here is that some folks are acknowledging the reality that the "owners should pay more" argument hasn't already been functionally removed from the discussion. Owners and players both agreed to make that basically impossible with the new apron rules. The choice of maxes or co-stars isn't a pro-player or anti-player argument. It's just the reality, and pretending like it's a matter of being cheap or being "willing to win" is just burying one's head in the sand.

There is still quite a bit of room for spending beyond the cap, though, and now there's more incentive for more teams to spend. There's no 2000s Lakers or 2010's Warriors anymore that makes it very unlikely that a good team can find their way to the Finals. So a team like the Grizzlies or Rockets can in any given year decide to go for it, spend into the tax and compete. It's much less likely that the next eight years are dominated by the Thunder because they have to let so many guys go. They'll still be really good, but they'll be beatable. That's great for everyone except the dreams of dynasty that the Thunder and their fans might have.

The Spurs could have traded for KD and tried to make a run this year and next before letting him fall off the books and getting ready for their next window. Or they could get lucky with their draft picks and have a very short window with those guys before letting on or two of their best players go if they aren't willing to take less to stay together. What they're not likely to do at all is carry a billon-dollar ledger in terms of salary and tax and have their draft picks frozen year after year to try to force a dynasty.

[Frenchfred]

GET REAL. You can’t take a championship with you either. I’m not trying to make this personal but do you not have a family? The way some of you are talking makes it sound more selfish than anything. A championship doesn’t mean more to me than generational wealth for my family. And I LOVE winning. But you know what? NOBODY cares about role player rings. That’s just a fact. The only rings that matter are the star player and MAYBE the 2nd option. I’m not leaving money on the table for a championship that’s NOT guaranteed. Especially when that means the rich owners get to keep it. A player can blow their Achilles out (or any other career ender) at any time and not be lucky enough to ever recover. Just like someone said, y’all are saying this kind of stuff because you will never see this type of money in your life. Easy to say. But I’m a realist and I know that anything can happen and I prefer my future family to have the money because life goes on after im dead and hardly anybody 50 years from now will stop and think “hey you remember that guy won NBA championships? He was a good player”. That doesn’t move me enough to take a damn pay cut.

we all have different priorities but let's not go Latrell Sprewell here, we are talking about dozens of millions of dollars in earnings, it's not like your family is going to starve to death.

[scott]

You need to work on you reading comprehension, re-read the actual post you were responding to, and not make up straw-man arguments. Did I say minor role players should sacrifice everything for the team? No, I was clearly talking about major star players—e.g., ‘what’s the difference between dying with $200 MILLION in the bank vs. $300 MILLION.

Second, if you can’t ‘feed your family’ with $200 MILLION in the bank Mr. Sprewell, you should have raised a more responsible family—that’s actually way more important than just giving them $200 million, and you could (and should) have done both.

Third, no, you can’t literally take the championship or a ring with you, but it does generate a sort of historical immortality, a legend, for whatever time the world has left. I’ll also personally congratulate and thank Robinson for his championships in Heaven, even if they weren’t the most important thing in the grand scheme of things. In that sense, championships are more valuable than the relatively minor incremental difference between $200 million and $300 million—remember, we’re still talking about $200 MILLION in the bank, PLUS championships.

And again, my final point was that star players might even net around the same (or possibly even more) when you factor in the greater notoriety and associated sponsorships, etc. from being on a truly great championship team. Players like Jordan (whom Wemby wants to meet or exceed) continue to bank off of their names and reputations long after they retire.

These are really easy words to type out when you’re talking about someone else’s money.

I’m sure some players grandchildren will take solace in giving up millions of dollars because you get to thank David Robinson in heaven.

[LeBowen]

I don't think it needs to be pointed out that most owners are greedy s bags with just a few of them being in the category of people that have too much time and money on their hands and use their NBA team as a measuring tool.

The point of all the discount talk should be about roster functionality and not how much the ownership is paying, that's why mentioning percentages of the total cap is imporant.
Jaylen Brown isn't worth 35% of the cap regardless of if those 35% amount to 10 or 60 million a year.

[scott]

There's a difference here is that some folks are acknowledging the reality that the "owners should pay more" argument hasn't already been functionally removed from the discussion. Owners and players both agreed to make that basically impossible with the new apron rules. The choice of maxes or co-stars isn't a pro-player or anti-player argument. It's just the reality, and pretending like it's a matter of being cheap or being "willing to win" is just burying one's head in the sand.

There is still quite a bit of room for spending beyond the cap, though, and now there's more incentive for more teams to spend. There's no 2000s Lakers or 2010's Warriors anymore that makes it very unlikely that a good team can find their way to the Finals. So a team like the Grizzlies or Rockets can in any given year decide to go for it, spend into the tax and compete. It's much less likely that the next eight years are dominated by the Thunder because they have to let so many guys go. They'll still be really good, but they'll be beatable. That's great for everyone except the dreams of dynasty that the Thunder and their fans might have.

The Spurs could have traded for KD and tried to make a run this year and next before letting him fall off the books and getting ready for their next window. Or they could get lucky with their draft picks and have a very short window with those guys before letting on or two of their best players go if they aren't willing to take less to stay together. What they're not likely to do at all is carry a billon-dollar ledger in terms of salary and tax and have their draft picks frozen year after year to try to force a dynasty.

Yes… the CBA (that both sides agreed to) is built to discourage superteams and dynasties… that should be acknowledged. The argument that some people are making is that the solution to this is the best players should give up their earnings in order to create the thing that is being discouraged: superteams and dynasties.

That’s the context. There is already a mechanism in place if teams want to do the thing that is being actively discouraged: teams paying the tax and suffering the apron penalties. Teams can just do that. There is nothing stopping them, the pathway and the exact calculable consequences are laid out for them.

That’s the solution, as opposed to asking the most talented individuals to sacrifice the slice of the pie they’ve earned. That’s just forcing a socialist pay structure upon a specific class of the contributing workers (players) in order to protect the free capitalist wealth transfer to the top (the owners).

Like I said, The salary cap has done wonders of causing fans to call the people who do all the work (players) greedy, so that rich owners can save money. I’m surprised the GOP congress hasn’t introduced the National Salary Cap Bill of 2025 yet, to be honest.

[scott]

There's a difference here is that some folks are acknowledging the reality that the "owners should pay more" argument hasn't already been functionally removed from the discussion. Owners and players both agreed to make that basically impossible with the new apron rules. The choice of maxes or co-stars isn't a pro-player or anti-player argument. It's just the reality, and pretending like it's a matter of being cheap or being "willing to win" is just burying one's head in the sand.

There is still quite a bit of room for spending beyond the cap, though, and now there's more incentive for more teams to spend. There's no 2000s Lakers or 2010's Warriors anymore that makes it very unlikely that a good team can find their way to the Finals. So a team like the Grizzlies or Rockets can in any given year decide to go for it, spend into the tax and compete. It's much less likely that the next eight years are dominated by the Thunder because they have to let so many guys go. They'll still be really good, but they'll be beatable. That's great for everyone except the dreams of dynasty that the Thunder and their fans might have.

The Spurs could have traded for KD and tried to make a run this year and next before letting him fall off the books and getting ready for their next window. Or they could get lucky with their draft picks and have a very short window with those guys before letting on or two of their best players go if they aren't willing to take less to stay together. What they're not likely to do at all is carry a billon-dollar ledger in terms of salary and tax and have their draft picks frozen year after year to try to force a dynasty.

Yes… the CBA (that both sides agreed to) is built to discourage superteams and dynasties… that should be acknowledged. The argument that some people are making is that the solution to this is the best players should give up their earnings in order to create the thing that is being discouraged: superteams and dynasties.

That’s the context. There is already a mechanism in place if teams want to do the thing that is being actively discouraged: teams paying the tax and suffering the apron penalties. Teams can just do that. There is nothing stopping them, the pathway and the exact calculable consequences are laid out for them.

That’s the solution, as opposed to asking the most talented individuals to sacrifice the slice of the pie they’ve earned. That’s just forcing a socialist pay structure upon a specific class of the contributing workers (players) in order to protect the free capitalist wealth transfer to the top (the owners).

Like I said, The salary cap has done wonders of causing fans to call the people who do all the work (players) greedy, so that rich owners can save money. I’m surprised the GOP congress hasn’t introduced the National Salary Cap Bill of 2025 yet, to be honest.

[ambchang]

Fans expecting players to take a lesser contract because it will help their favourite team win are simply naive, stupid, selfish, or some combination of all three.

Whether a player take less money to give a team a chance at signing better players is the choice of that player, not anybody else's. Whether that player will get more satisfaction earning more money than to give that money to the team, who may or may not be able to effectively use that money to field a more compe ive team, is up to that player, not any one else.

To say that you will trade $10M for more les is fine, it's good for you. To say that any other person should do it because you would, when you weren't, aren't and never will be in that situation, is just pure idiocy.

Also, owners do not have a great track record effectively using that money to field championship winning teams. In fact, in most cases, the owners just pocket that change. Owners have historically, time and again, fielded inferior products to line their own pockets. From OKC unwilling to pay luxury taxes and lost Harden, to Miami waiving Miller to save $17M in luxury taxes after Lebron signed for less, owners just make more money.

Besides, this entire cap thing was an owner's invention to make themselves more profitable, more as a wink wink way between the owners to collude legally to suppress player pay, and save themselves from their own stupidity. And yes, when I say owners, I include the FO as FO decisions, especially big ones, would normally go through the owners.

The cap supposedly had two purposes:
1) From the league's perspective, it levels the playing fields for large and small market teams. At least more so. Big markets enjoy additional merchandise sales, local TV deals and as such have more money to spend. However, even with a cap big markets will give players more endorsement opportunities and better quality of living. Some times places also have lower state taxes (see Florida). But even after the caps that led to lockouts (1999 and 2011), big names still prefer LA, GS and Miami. NY and BRK sucked with questionable FOs and has high state taxes (didn't affect LA and GS that much) so players don't go there much.

2) From the owner's perspective, it keeps them from the race to the bottom. Prior to 1999, while the cap exists, there were many loopholes that allows FO to cir vent the cap so that they would sign players like Jim McIlvaine and Jon Koncak to big deals because they are idiots and worry other teams will snatch them up (as if there aren't any replaceable players that are readily available to replace those) or sign huge deals for unproven talent (Juwan Howard, Chris Webber and Glenn Robinson's rookie deals which led to the rookie scale contracts in 1995) that are highly risky and heavily relying on potential. So they wanted a cap that led to the 1999 lockout by setting a collusion circle to keep themselves from out-stupiding each other. That helped somewhat, but not totally as we still see contracts like Ben Wallace and Gilbert Arenas, so they had another lockout in 2011, which still didn't help, and now they have the second apron. Each step of the way, the player lost ground because they can't out last the owners, the owners have multiple sources of income, and the players don't.

The salary cap, from what I recalled, has pretty much stayed around 50/50 split of revenue between players and owners. In 2001, the league had revenue of $2.5B, so $1.25B goes to the players, and $1.25B goes to the owners for other operation expenses and profits. Fast forward to 2025, the league had revenue of $11.5B, which means that $5.65B goes to players and $5.65B goes to the owners for other operating expenses and profits. I can guarantee you other staff and expenses did not increase ANYWHERE approaching a 4x+ increase during that time. In fact, inflation during that period in the US was about 82%, put in additional operating costs to make things more entertaining or additional analytics and marketing, and you are still not looking at anywhere close to that jump of $3.4B in additional revenue share the owners got. This is reflected in team valuation, where a team would be worth less than $300M in 2001 to over $10B in 2025.

So instead of cutting prices to the fans, who are stupidly willing to pay for all of this while complaining about player salaries, or better yet, give a bigger share of the revenues to the players as the players are actually the end product, the owners put in more stringent cap rules to keep themselves from burning a hole in their pockets, because they KNOW they have that money to spend and if they don't, someone else will and will once again eat into their profits. So they increase the collusion and take the money.

All this time, fans are actually out there complaining about the players, who are the product, are what the fans pay to see, are the ones putting in the work around the clock to improve everything, are the ones risking injuries. I just do not understand how this logic works, at all.

So if you are so great that you are willing to give up $10M to line up the pockets of owners, naively thinking that they will give it back to you through the forms of signing more players, all the power to you. Work on your game and to to the NBA and be that player.

Ultimately, in a fight between millionaires and billionaires, the millionaires always lose.

[Chinook]

Holy conflating the whole for the individual, Batman.

I'm not conflating them. You're ignoring them.

A star player does in fact, not get the same amount of money, by taking less money.

Being pro-player isn't just being pro-star player. I'm actually pro-labor, and creating massive income disparity isn't actually something I see as being good for the working class. Of course, the real world isn't zero-sum in the way NBA salary distribution is.

Players are individuals with agency, not some collective borg whose goal is to maximize their aggregate earnings.

"Players" are actually a collective, just as "owners" are. You have it in your head that this is about an individual player getting more from an individual owner, and that's just poor perspective. The player is taking more money from his co-workers, and the owner is reducing amount of money his co-owners have to pay.

The point is that the question of taking maxes or taking less has NOTHING to do with buying owner propaganda. As a collective group, it literally doesn't cost them more money to do this. They and the players have already negotiated a reality where teams aren't allowed to maintain massive payrolls. This is a matter of an individual choice a player makes on what factors are worth most to them. A player or a group of players can decide to take less and stay together or get as much as they can, even if it means one or more of them have to leave their team. Both choices are valid. Both choices reflect real-world choices people make every day, even if you personally haven't. Plenty of us have had to choice to leave a job for more money elsewhere, even if it's someone in retail deciding to leave their store for another store.

We as fans might want the players to stay together and make as much as they want, but that's not really a serious argument anymore.

[KDKSpurs24]

You need to work on you reading comprehension, re-read the actual post you were responding to, and not make up straw-man arguments. Did I say minor role players should sacrifice everything for the team? No, I was clearly talking about major star players—e.g., ‘what’s the difference between dying with $200 MILLION in the bank vs. $300 MILLION.

Second, if you can’t ‘feed your family’ with $200 MILLION in the bank Mr. Sprewell, you should have raised a more responsible family—that’s actually way more important than just giving them $200 million, and you could (and should) have done both.

Third, no, you can’t literally take the championship or a ring with you, but it does generate a sort of historical immortality, a legend, for whatever time the world has left. I’ll also personally congratulate and thank Robinson for his championships in Heaven, even if they weren’t the most important thing in the grand scheme of things. In that sense, championships are more valuable than the relatively minor incremental difference between $200 million and $300 million—remember, we’re still talking about $200 MILLION in the bank, PLUS championships.

And again, my final point was that star players might even net around the same (or possibly even more) when you factor in the greater notoriety and associated sponsorships, etc. from being on a truly great championship team. Players like Jordan (whom Wemby wants to meet or exceed) continue to bank off of their names and reputations long after they retire.

200 vs 300? The difference is a whopping $100 million! At the end of the day, star player or not, that money in fact may never be made up with endorsements because the reality is that the star player can still have both the full contract AND get a high amount in endorsements. Because like I said, taking a pay cut to sign other players doesn’t guarantee you a championship. And I wouldn’t use Jordan as a comparison because it seems like the media and most fans will never allow someone to reach the same amount of notoriety as he got. Shai just won that championship but I can guarantee you he will never get the level of notoriety and endorsements that Jordan received just because he won a championship. Same for Tatum and whoever else.