In the NBA, it’s already next season.
The offseason, technically, may have only lasted about an hour. The Boston Celtics won the NBA Finals on Monday night, and when the clock ticked down to Tuesday morning, teams – in many cases – could start talking to their own free agents.
The games on the court are over, for now. Let the off-court games begin.
“This is a business,” Miami Heat president Pat Riley said when his team’s season ended last month, “as much as anything else.”
The champion Celtics and Jayson Tatum may agree to an extension that will be worth a record $315 million, although that record will likely be broken annually for years to come. There is a Olympics that will have tons of NBA representation. The Los Angeles Lakers and Cleveland Cavaliers have yet to hire head coaches. LeBron James, who plays (at least for now) for the Lakers and used to play for the Cavs, could be a free agent. Bronny James – his oldest son – could be about to enter the league as a rookie, there’s a draft that starts on June 26, and the Atlanta Hawks hold the No. 1 selection in what will be one of countless autumn dominoes this summer.
“I really like the process we built and the people we did it with,” Hawks general manager Landry Fields said. “At the end of the day, you will all judge whether this was the right choice or not. For me, it’s more about seeing where we are, what our process was, how we are evaluating this current player and moving forward.”
The new rule, part of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement that says teams can talk to their own free agents before the start of free agency on June 30, means some deals could be agreed upon – but not announced – even earlier. than normal. Agreements cannot be signed until July 6 in most cases. Penalties for violators on these fronts will be severe: fines of up to $2 million, loss of draft picks and suspension of team personnel involved in violations are among the NBA’s options.
Some players will receive a few million this summer. Some will receive many millions. The creativity of teams and their salary cap gurus will be tested this summer, as always.
“You have to put a pencil on the end result,” Riley said. “And then you also have to define what the cost of collateral damage will be from going over the first yard, the second yard and then the repeater tax.”
Meanwhile, the NBA will soon guarantee billions. Billions and billions. The biggest deal — a series of deals, really — in the league’s history is probably about to close, being the new media rights packages the league has been negotiating for some time.
Current agreements with ABC-ESPN and Turner Sports expire after next season and the NBA has been talking to NBC, ESPN and Amazon, among other networks and platforms, about what comes next. The numbers are surprising: 11 years and more than 70 billion dollars is the expectation, both exceeding the current agreement of nine years and 24 billion dollars.
“The global nature definitely influences the discussions,” said NBA Commissioner Adam Silver. “As all media companies, even traditional ones, move into streaming and have primary or adjacent streaming platforms, these platforms are increasingly global. And their ability to reach our fans around the world is a critical component of these discussions.”
It’s a mix of everything right now, some contracts that will span a decade, some that won’t last until the end of the Summer League in Las Vegas next month. There are big questions: Will Golden State keep its core together, will San Antonio make a big move to put more talent around rookie of the year Victor Wembanyama, where will James go, will Miami give Jimmy Butler the extension he seeks, Donovan Mitchell staying in Cleveland, and so on.
The only real certainties are these: There are 29 teams chasing the Celtics and they all want to improve. It starts with the draft, then free agency, and many people around the NBA think this will also be a summer filled with trades.
“Good players are really hard to find, really hard to find,” Oklahoma City general manager Sam Presti said. “Guys that can play consistently in the NBA and be in the NBA for three-plus years…that’s actually harder than it sounds.”
Welcome to the next season, now underway.
___
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
