If you are swapping out RAM to maintain your current level of performance, or upgrading the OS, etc... you are maintaining your PC.
If you are swapping out the GPU from a 3090 to a 5090, you are no longer "maintaining" your PC... you are upgrading it. There is a difference.
I don't go into get my car maintained and come out with new cat-back exhaust.
A team is most certainly "allowed" (next thing we'll hear that allowed means something else) to maintain their roster under the CBA. The Celtics absolutely could have retained their entire roster. They chose not to. Whether or not the Celtics could have upgraded their roster is another question. That's the distinction, and it matters because this entire conversation was me pointing out the premise "the CBA does not allow you to maintain your roster" is objectively false. Now, if the premise was "the CBA does not allow you to improve/upgrade your roster, that is another matter... and it's not the one I was addressing (because it's not the one that was presented).
Anyway, I'm going to move on to other conversations in hope the quality of discourse maintains.
Your opinion is fine. "I think it would be nice if Wemby takes a paycut so the Spurs can afford better supporting players" is a perfectly fine opinion for you to have. "If Wemby isn't satisfied with lower pay, its because he is stupid and selfish because unless he raises lazy slugs who just sit around and party, that should be enough for him" is also an opinion you can have... it just makes you look like an idiot.
Maybe Wemby will take a paycut, hey that would be sweet. But "Wemby must take a paycut in order to be great" is... a take.
Which would be an improvement.
Sometimes maintaining what you want means improving what you have.
Like improving your income to maintain your standard of living
Yes, but the premise was not "maintaining the win loss record" or "maintaining the overall performance level"... it was maintaining the roster. Improving the roster is not maintaining the roster. Maintain and improve aren't even synonyms. It's amazing this even has to be explained to people.
Edit: actually, the exact comment was "teams aren't allowed to maintain massive payrolls"
This statement actually had nothing to do with the on court performance at all. It's just about payroll dollars. Teams are objectively allowed to maintain massive payrolls. The CBA explicitly outlines the mechanism by which teams can do this. So, feel free to move the goal posts all you want, but this statement is flat out incorrect and that is what I called out.
Instead of "I actually meant to say this"... we went down this stupid rabbit hole of "well I actually meant this other thing entirely and you should have known that I meant a completely different word in a completely different context".
"teams aren't allowed to maintain massive payrolls" (objectively false statement) is not the same statement as "the CBA makes it prohibitive for teams with massive payrolls to improve their roster" (a statement most people, including myself, would agree with)
Just pick the right words, and if you pick the wrong ones then correct yourself and move on
Last edited by scott; 07-04-2025 at 05:49 PM.
If you want to maintain a contending roster, you have to replace declining pieces with newer, better pieces. Otherwise, the roster becomes unable to dominate and then eventually compete. Because the second apron removes the ability to replace players as they move on, a team becomes unable to maintain their roster. It would be like if there was a law that you couldn't change the tires, oil, brake pads or any parts on certain cars. Those cars become unusable even though nothing is stopping you from keeping the car. Because "keeping" and "maintaining" aren't the same thing.
I'm just being antagonistic for no good reason. Never mind me.
On with the thread.
We agree on this point.
But that's not what you said.
Thanks for clarifying.
It is what I said. It's not what you interpreted. My entire point was that the new CBA limits teams in more ways than just the tax. It's not simply a matter of an owner being willing to spend. Eventually the team will rot, no matter how much money an owner has. So saying "the owner just needs to spend more" is a non-solution. Even if an owner is willing, a team needs to drop under the tax periodically to continue to function. They can't maintain a contender if they keep a hyper-expensive roster. They certainly can't improve or upgrade such a roster.
What you said is written for anyone to see, and quoted in case you go and edit it. If you want to dig yourself further into this hole, knock yourself out. I'm sure no one actually cares, either way.
You know I was responding to another poster who suggested we were ‘stupid and selfish’ for suggesting star players should take less than the maximum.
And while I may not have anywhere near the ‘same’ interests as Wemby, if he explicitly tells Spurs fans he’s going to go down as the best ever—with all that entails—gets hundreds of thousands of fans’ hopes up, gets them emotionally invested in him and the Spurs, and then affirmatively prevents what he told us he would accomplish by demanding the absolute max, rather than being slightly less obscenely rich AND the best ever—that is stupid and selfish.
Timmy managed to get the max for his first 12 years or so, and bring home trophies as well. They’re not mutually exclusive.
One thing that I’ve been kind of turning over in my head and haven’t posted yet. I see Wemby as absolutely transcendent. His ceiling is a Jokic class offensive player, and a defender who s all over Gobert’s legacy. He might be good enough to dominate with only one other high level star. If that’s the case, in the era of the second apron, the Spurs could load upon 4-5 high level role players, and keep them,using that salary not paid to a 3rd star you don’t need.
You clearly care. You can't just admit you miscalculated the situation. You thought you'd caught me in another semantic trap and now that it's clear you haven't you are salty. You said you were done worrying about this, but you've kept responding for hours at this point. People can use different definitions of the word and it still be valid. It's not a big deal to anyone except you. I never told you you couldn't use maintain as you did. You decided to play semantic police and now won't let it go.
True, but Duncan didn’t play under the current CBA, etc. I hope Wemby is good enough regardless, but we’ll only know in retrospect, when it’s too late to ‘fix’ anything. We’ll see.
Imo it’s not the concept of a salary cap that does that. It’s whatever revenue sharing percentages are negotiated for. What figure the cap is set at is basically a reflection of that.
the cap structure, such as the more strict penalties, doesn’t really have much to do with the owners saving money, its about parity. It makes it harder for specific teams to hoard 3-4 max level players but doesn’t stop those 3-4 players from getting max money. They just can’t do so on the same team for successive years. if they want to be on loaded teams, they may have to take less. But they don’t have to do that.
i think anger at the specific cap structures and penalties is very misguided. If you have issue with the revenue sharing percentages, then that’s what you’d want addressed.
if castle and Harper both become stars, maybe then can join wemby and all 3 can be max players. It’s just that one of them might have to do it in Charlotte or Portland because the spurs won’t realistically be able to sustain all 3 for more than a year or two. They can all get their money. But if they want to be on a perennial contender altogether and leave other teams starving for talent, then yes they will have to take less
Last edited by spurraider21; 07-04-2025 at 10:10 PM.
I said expecting. Not suggesting. If you were suggesting, I wasn’t talking about you.
If you thought expecting and suggesting are the same thing, then that is is not selfish, but stupid, in another way.
In the context of the entire thread, you were ONLY calling those ‘expecting’ stars to take less stupid and selfish, but you were making absolutely NO comment about those ‘suggesting’ they should? Even though those ‘suggesting’ they should would essentially have to be at least likewise ‘selfish?’ Cute attempt to parse words—but now you’re just dishonest.
No bag watching players. You would take the max contract if offered, and you're not nearly as good as any of the players on the roster.
just keep moving the goalpost. That has nothing to do with what I said.A $100,000 and a $50 millions salaries are the same, yeah rightI can tell you that I have given a lot of money to help people and I don't make 50 million a year.
On another note:
Am I the only one who thinks that the apron rules don't affect the Spurs at all? I mean does anybody think the Spurs would get so deep into the tax that they'd spend apron money (even if the aprons didn't exist)? This franchise has always been cheap anyway.
if Harper becomes All-NBA caliber then having Wemby and Harper makes you an automatic contender every year
They probably won't, but even if the ownership continues being cheap, we'll have the Wemby effect and a lot of endorsment deals because he's on the team. Those can pay for the luxury tax.
No way this Ledger thing would've happened without Wemby.
But yeah, first apron is at 127% and second is at 134% of the salary cap, that's not Spurs-like.
Just peak Wemby will make us an automatic contender every year as long as the supporting cast isn't garbage.
So not only do you suggest what players should do with their lives, you are now demanding me change the context of my words to suit your illiteracy? That’s certainly interesting id say.
And in the context of this thread, there are a few posts expecting players to take pay cuts, opining that not doing so is not in the best interest to their careers.
Point is, a player giving up a few million per year in their contract expecting the front office to just magically being able to field a team capable of winning a le, or even multiple times over, is naive. Dirk did it later in his career and the Mavs pissed that away. Brunson is doing that now (looking for a bigger pay day down the road) and we will see how the Knicks fare but I’m not counting on it. If a player thinks them giving up money and the team WILL win a le, that is certainly naive because history hasn’t been kind to them, and as such a fan thinks that then s/he is certainly naive through the same logic.
If a fan expect a player to take less money so that they get more satisfaction following a team then that is certainly selfish. There really is no other way around it. The entire concept of other people sacrificing for your own good is selfish by definition.
A fan expecting a team to just magically field a championship team that can win multiple les just because players will take pay cuts so that the fans can get some satisfaction without doing anything, that is an unrealistic expectation which means stupidity.
Who should the spurs sign and construct the roster if fox and wemby and whoever else takes less money? How much less? What is the game plan? How will that roster fare with other contending teams? Just spewing out “so and so should take less money so the spurs will build a stronger team” without any details is lazy.
Finally, putting the blame on players without knowing the history and giving the owners a free pass even though it was the owners who created this limitation is stupid, as in illogical. You may at those are two different things and to that I won’t argue, I should’ve added illogical as part of my rant.
Makes sense?
Finally, suggesting is totally fine. Even though I’d like to see a more flushed out plan. I can suggest that wemby can take a lesser contract and it can help the team manage their finances better. But then I thought that’s a pretty well known thing so I’d say that is rather superfluous.
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