Trade & Free Agency 2026/2027

[Jmaciscool]

Seems like the NBA's main concern is to prevent teams from paying players under the table to make up for taking a cheaper, cap friendy deal because that gives a true unfair advantage to the team with actual cap circumvention (hence needing both of the above CBA points that FGump posted to be true).

KL didn't take a cheaper deal, so there's no cap advantage to the team if he's making more money from fake endorsements. Yes, it means the Clips could theoretically convince players to play for them over another team without such financial advantages, but there's always going to be certain advantages some teams have over other teams, whether it's market size, history, climate, etc. It's never going to be a completely fair playing field where every team is 100% equal.

It may seem shady, it probably doesn't feel very just or fair, but at the end of the day it doesn't seem like the Clippers circumvented the cap with the KL contract imo when seeing the CBA wording.

The problem is it FEELS like they did, so if the investigation concludes with no findings of wrong doing it's going to be a tough message to sell.