NBA notes: Spurs could be last of a low-spending breed; Stan Kroenke’s run of success
As the San Antonio Spurs sputtered along to a 22-win campaign, tying for the second-worst record in the NBA and its worst in... The NBA's incoming CBA has created strong disincentives for teams to go below the salary floor, with San Antonio Spurs finishing $14 million under the $111.29 million threshold. The new rules will have punitive effects for high-spenders that go above the “second apron” set at $17.5 million above the luxury tax, and try to push teams at the bottom to spend more. Any team under the floor will see some impact on both their bottom line and team-building options. With the new rules, there won’t be a big payoff for the players on the team, either. This could make for a run for the Denver Nuggets in the finals.
Published : 11 months ago by Allen Davis in Sports
As the San Antonio Spurs sputtered along to a 22-win campaign, tying for the second-worst record in the NBA and its worst in 26 years, their decision to use this season as a weigh station for the future turned out to be a fruitful one.
Last month, San Antonio won the NBA Draft Lottery and the right to select French prospect Victor Wembanyama in this month’s draft. For Spurs players, the spoils will be paid out in the months to come.
The Spurs finished $14 million under the $111.29 million salary floor, with a team payroll of roughly $97.1 million. By finishing under that threshold, San Antonio guaranteed that its players will be paid out the difference — based on rules laid out in the current collective bargaining agreement — with a full share worth more than $700,000, according to league sources.
San Antonio was the only team in the NBA to finish under the floor, set at 90 percent of the $123.655 million cap this season — and it may be the last team to go under for a while. The league’s incoming CBA has created strong disincentives for teams to go below the floor.
While the new rules will have punitive effects for high-spenders that go above the “second apron” set at $17.5 million above the luxury tax, the incoming CBA will also try to push teams at the bottom to spend more.
Under the current CBA, teams have until the final regular-season game to get over the salary floor; under the incoming CBA, for which The Athletic recently obtained a copy of the term sheet, team salaries will be counted as of the first day of the regular season. Any team under the floor will see some impact on both their bottom line and team-building options. A team under the floor will have the difference between its team salary and the floor added to its payroll, so it can’t use that amount as available cap space anymore. It also won’t be allowed to perform any transactions after the first day of the regular season that would further lower its team salary.
In past years, teams have stayed under the salary floor through the season before reaching it just before the regular season ended. For example, the Oklahoma City Thunder signed Gabriel Deck in April 2021 to get there. The New York Knicks signed Luca Vildoza the next month to do the same (the 2020-21 season ran into mid-May).
With the new rules, there won’t be a big payoff for the players on the team, either. If a team is under the salary floor, its players will no longer benefit by splitting the difference between themselves; instead, the amount by which a team is under the floor will go to the NBA and be given out to all players.
Any team that doesn’t hit the salary floor will take a revenue hit too. Next season, any team under the floor will only receive half of the money paid out to each non-taxpaying team. And starting in 2024-25, teams that don’t hit the floor won’t receive any of the money paid out to a non-taxpaying team. Each non-taxpayer reportedly received about $10.5 million last season.
Last offseason, the Spurs largely opted out of free agency, traded Dejounte Murray — their highest-paid player — and sat still in July. They only signed two free agents, waiting until August to give contracts to Joe Wieskamp and Gorgui Dieng, before waiving each of them in the months ahead. They gave Keldon Johnson a $74 million contract extension, but that doesn’t kick in until next season.
The new CBA should create more activity in free agency because of those nudges and could lead to more spending overall.
There are a lot of interesting storylines about these NBA Finals, and we have several of them covered here at The Athletic. So let’s dive into one that few people have probably spent much time thinking about: the past 16 months for the Kroenke Sports & Entertainment empire.
Stan Kroenke and Kroenke Sports own a number of teams across two continents, and lately, they’ve all been pretty successful. The Los Angeles Rams won the Super Bowl in February 2022. The Colorado Avalanche won the Stanley Cup last June. The Colorado Mammoth won the National Lacrosse League Cup that month too. Arsenal nearly took the Premier League before Manchester City caught them, but their second-place finish is still well ahead of preseason projections.
Now, the Denver Nuggets are in the finals. This could make for quite a run for the Kroenkes.
Kroenke bought the Nuggets back in 2000 but only as the third suitor in the queue. There were two previous agreements to sell the Nuggets before in the year before Kroenke paid $450 million for the NBA team, the Avalanche and then-Pepsi Center (now Ball Arena).
The first one, in April 1999, went for $400 million, but it went bad because shareholders of Ascent Entertainment Group, the company that owned the teams and arena, felt the properties had been sold for too little, according to St. Louis Dispatch reporting in 2000. Shareholders sued to block the deal, and Ascent put the teams up for auction. The would-be buyers were Bill and Nancy Laurie — Bill was Kroenke’s brother-in-law — and they pivoted and bought the St. Louis Blues instead. Donald Sturm bought the teams at auction for $400 million in July 1999 — he even outbid Broncos owner Pat Bowlen and Broncos legend John Elway — but that transaction fell through even though the Nuggets and Broncos printed media guides listing him as the new owner, photo and all. The city of Denver had the right of refusal because of a deal the teams made to be able to leave a publicly funded area for the Pepsi Center. Its mayor tried to get a guarantee that the Nuggets and Avalanche wouldn’t be moved for 25 years, but Sturm wouldn’t agree. That deal was off, then Ascent itself got sold to Liberty Media, and finally Kroenke bought the teams and arena in April 2000.
Kroenke had already owned 40 percent of the St. Louis Rams — he was involved in moving them to Missouri before being the guy who took them out. He took sole control of Arsenal in 2018, though he started buying off pieces off it in 2007, became the largest shareholder in 2009 and majority owner in 2011.
Who’s on first? No one
This will be a rare NBA Finals. The Nuggets-Miami Heat matchup is the first one in 33 years without a single player who made first team All-NBA that season.
The last time that happened was the 1990 finals between the Detroit Pistons and Portland Trail Blazers. Joe Dumars and Clyde Drexler both made third team All-NBA that season. Nikola Jokić and Jimmy Butler both made second team All-NBA this season.
The NBA notched another impressive TV rating on the board with its number for Game 7 of the Heat-Celtics Eastern Conference finals.
The game averaged 11.9 million viewers, according to Warner Bros. Discovery Sports. That is TNT’s third-most watched NBA game ever and the most-watched Eastern Conference finals game. It also drew more viewers than any game in the 2020 finals and all but Game 6 of the 2021 finals and Game 3 of the 2022 finals, while being even with Game 1 and posting a slightly fewer average viewership than Game 2.
Topics: Basketball, NBA