NBA offseason themes to watch: Pacers' roster-building, second-apron fears and more
One team's tax situation has turned unpredictable. A player's contract is once again at the center of mixed messaging. And the entire NBA is avoiding one boogeyman.
Let's open up the notebook to discuss three themes that have caught my eye heading into the offseason:
The Pacers were ready for a historically expensive season.
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A run through the Eastern Conference, even if it had halted before their miraculous seven-game NBA Finals appearance, was enough to justify paying the luxury tax for the first time in 20 years, league sources said. Indiana's payroll was about to reach never-before-seen heights.
Life in the NBA changes quickly.
Until shortly into Game 7 of the NBA Finals, the Pacers were the favorites to win the East once again next season. They were prepared to pay the tax to do it. Then the heart of their team, Tyrese Haliburton, tore his Achilles.
With next season now a wash, the Pacers are still deciding how to handle their financial future, according to league sources.
Do they keep everyone together and pay the tax in 2025-26? Or do they make a cost-cutting move or two with Haliburton sidelined and with a squad whose success is capped next season?
The Pacers have 10 players under contract for 2025-26. Their salaries alone carry them only $20 million short of the luxury tax line. Those 10 do not include longtime starting center Myles Turner, who hits free agency June 30. Even if he were to re-sign even for a contract well below market value (say, $18 million a year, which is slightly less than he makes now and isn't realistic), his new salary would send Indiana into the tax.
Think about some of the comparisons Turner could use to earn a significant raise. Last summer, Jarrett Allen extended with the Cleveland Cavaliers on a deal that will start at $30 million. But Turner just outplayed Allen in a second-round playoff series. The Oklahoma City Thunder paid Isaiah Hartenstein $28.5 million in 2024-25 salary. Nic Claxton re-signed with the Brooklyn Nets last July to make $25.3 million this past season. On Friday, Naz Reid and the Minnesota Timberwolves agreed to a five-year, $125 million contract, team and league sources confirmed to The Athletic's Jon Krawczynski.
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Such is the market for centers, a position making a comeback. And Turner, a defensive difference-maker who can shoot 3s, has a rare skill set.
A mammoth offer from another team may not come for Turner, though it's possible a giant contract from someone else would dissuade the Pacers from matching it and bringing him back. Most of the organizations with significant cap space this summer aren't competitive and wouldn't shell out the dough for a premier role player. If the Pacers choose to dip under the tax, they could still re-sign the big man and offload money in another way.
Jarace Walker makes $6.7 million next season. Bennedict Mathurin, who is eligible for an extension this summer, makes $9.2 million. Obi Toppin makes $14 million.
Or the Pacers could bet on themselves, opting to slide into the tax and keeping a core that just made the finals intact. They could fight to remain competitive in a decrepit Eastern Conference in 2026, then return the following season with a healthy Haliburton and a young nucleus.
Indiana is still deciding its path.
Denver Nuggets owner Josh Kroenke has had a difficult week.
While discussing the limitations for teams that venture into the second apron, a payroll threshold well above the luxury tax that restricts the types of transactions an organization can make, Kroenke dropped what most fans consider a no-no. He referenced a three-time MVP, Nikola Jokić, and the word 'trade' in the same sentence.
'For us as an organization, going into that second apron is not necessarily something that we're scared of, (but) I think that there are rules around it that we needed to be very careful of with our injury history,' Kroenke told reporters on hand. 'The wrong person gets injured, and very quickly you're into a scenario that I never want to have to contemplate, and that's trading No. 15 (Jokić).
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'We're very conscious of that, pushing forward, providing the resources that we can when the moment arrives. But that second apron — is it a hard cap? I'm not 100 percent sure. But it's something that teams are very aware of.'
The reaction to Kroenke's honesty was not kind.
Jokić is the NBA's consensus best player. How could an owner, especially one with a reputation of not wanting to spend money, possibly mention even in passing the thought of trading the greatest star in the franchise's history just because of a lowly payroll milestone? Such penny-pinching should be only for the paupers!
The answer is because the second apron — even if it does trigger extravagant tax payments — is not just about the extra dollars.
Kroenke's point was not that he would want to trade Jokić down the line, no matter what happens with the rest of the roster. It was that the current collective bargaining agreement has set up a reality in which decisions are not always made by the teams, but sometimes for the teams.
Franchises stuck above the second apron better be ready to win and win now — or else.
A team above the second apron, which projects to be $207.8 million in 2025-26, cannot sign free agents to any salary above the minimum, and certain types of players aren't eligible to sign at all, even for the lowest possible figures. It cannot take in more money than it gives out in trades. Future draft picks get frozen. Trade exceptions are eliminated. Essentially, any way to improve your team evaporates.
First and foremost, living in the second apron is about losing resources.
As Kroenke spoke at his news conference, a relevant teardown was occurring on the other side of the country.
The Boston Celtics, only a year removed from a championship and only a couple of months after a devastating Achilles injury to their best player, Jayson Tatum, had just traded away one of their centerpieces, Jrue Holiday. The move was purely a financial one for a team that feared surpassing the second apron in 2025-26.
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With little to no Tatum expected next season, the Celtics, who just lost in the second round of the playoffs, couldn't justify another year above the second apron. So they traded one starter.
Shortly after Kroenke's news conference concluded, they flipped another, sending Kristaps Porziņģis to the Atlanta Hawks, another monetary move.
The Celtics are now out of the second apron. They are also a worse basketball team, no longer a part of the East's top tier. One injury, just as Kroenke said with regards to his own squad, forced them to make deals they never would have considered if teams could worry only about basketball and none of the CBA quirks that come with building an NBA winner.
When the league and players' association first released this CBA in 2023, conversation followed about the second apron acting as an unofficial hard cap, a concept to which Kroenke alluded. The Nuggets have made odd financial decisions during this time. For example, they're the only team to hand out the taxpayer mid-level exception over the past couple of summers, giving it to Reggie Jackson in 2023 and Dario Sarić in 2024. They regretted both decisions, attaching a slew of second-round picks to Jackson so they could dump him and then watching Sarić struggle this past season. They have treaded between the first and second aprons in the meantime.
Denver knows better than most that expensive teams today — more than during previous CBA eras — can't afford to miss on the few swings they get.
But the Nuggets are not the only team talking about the second apron this way.
It's possible that the only organization above the second apron in 2025-26 will be the Cavaliers. If Cleveland fails to make a consequential run in the playoffs again next season, it will have the same conversation the rest of the league has.
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The point of this CBA was to encourage a changing of the guard. The league wanted parity. It's accomplishing that. But with parity comes hyper-successful organizations that are unable to keep the band together for too long.
The rules are working as intended, and while fans may be upset to hear reality phrased the way Kroenke said it, he's hardly the only person in the NBA thinking this way.
The Phoenix Suns want to find Beal a new home. The situation — from a winning standpoint, from a personality one, from a financial one — continues to dive. Beal, whom the team traded for two summers ago, still has a couple of seasons and $110 million remaining on his contract.
Every possibility has floated to the surface.
Phoenix could try to trade Beal, as it did this past season, but his no-trade clause remains. The same that was true before the 2025 trade deadline is the case today, according to a league source familiar with Beal's thought process: Beal would be open to the right trade that sends him the right destination, but his preference is to remain in Phoenix, even if the team won only 35 games a season ago and just downgraded from Kevin Durant, who it dealt to the Houston Rockets last weekend.
Since leaving Washington in 2023, Beal's wife and kids have moved from D.C. to Los Angeles and then, before the start of this season, to Phoenix full time. Playing for another team would leave him with two options: He would have to either pull his kids out of school, moving them again, or leave his family altogether, neither of which excites him.
So the Suns have tried another strategy.
Reports from local outlets have emerged that Phoenix would consider waiving and stretching Beal's contract, a move that could seriously hinder the Suns' flexibility down the line but would help them stay below the second apron in 2025-26. Of course, waiving and stretching Beal — a rule that would allow Phoenix to release Beal from his contract and then spread the $110 million it owes him over five years instead of two, lessening his cap number to approximately $22 million a year — isn't even possible without Beal giving back money, which would be out of character.
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There is a niche rule in the collective bargaining agreement that prevents teams from waiving and stretching players willy-nilly. In this case, the Suns would be victims of it.
In any given season, the stretched money on a team's books can equal no more than 15 percent of that year's salary cap. The cap for next season is projected to be $154.6 million. Beal's stretched money, the previously mentioned $22 million, would equal 14.3 percent of that.
However, this is where the Suns shot themselves in the foot.
In August 2024, they waived and stretched two players: Nassir Little and E.J. Liddell. Despite those moves running under the radar (and despite the eerily similar last names), these moves don't appear little now.
Little's money is on Phoenix's books into the 2030s. Liddell's is there for the next two seasons. In 2025-26, the Suns owe the two a combined $3.8 million in dead money, which would combine with Beal's hypothetical dead money to make up more than 15 percent of next season's salary cap.
So for the Suns to waive Beal, they would have to get him to agree to give back a consequential portion of his contract — $2.7 million a year over those five years. It adds up to $13.8 million total.
Beal could make that money back (or he could possibly add to his income) after hitting the open market. I asked a few executives around the league what they believe Beal could be worth if he were a free agent. The consensus was in the range of the mid-level exception, which starts with a $14.1 million salary in 2025-26. But while certain winning situations or spectacular organizations would appeal to him, according to league sources, he's also not trying to leave his family or upend their lives.
It means that once again, the Suns and Beal aren't in a much different situation than they were back when Phoenix was calling around the league in search of a place he'd be willing to go, and that would also be down to absorb his large contract. Despite the noise, the Suns didn't get close to offloading Beal then. At least one crucial element of this saga would have to change for them to get close now.
(Top photo of Bradley Beal: Bill Streicher / Imagn Images)
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