It is a hard salary cap for a new team picking up a FA. Kawhi took less to go to LA. A lot less from what I read.

The Nets have one playoff series victory since 2007.
The Clippers have three playoff series victories since 2007.
The Bulls have four playoff series victories since 2007.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

As FF noted, the Nets have been well run for a while now though, as they climbed out of the rubble of the Celtics trade and built a tough playoff team this year. They jumped the Knicks for much the same reason that the Clippers jumped the Lakers. I also think hometown considerations played a part in both Leonard and Irving's decisions on top of the competence of the teams they went to. The Bulls by contrast had absolutely no interest from hometown kid Davis when he demanded a trade and seem to only be able to use that as a factor for overpaying guys with no other options like Wade and Parker.

I don't know enough to argue otherwise, but to me it seems like neither franchise was going anywhere until they got these players.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

That seems like very poor criteria for determining a well run team.

By your logic the Warriors weren't well run until the very moment they won the NBA title

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Listen to the river sing sweet songs
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Well, when you purposely build your team around staying competitive AND opening up over $60 million in cap space for the following summer, then yes correct it's pretty much FA or bust. But that's the entire point, those teams got the best FA's while their famous counterparts, the Lakers and Knicks, struck out. And all precisely because the Nets and Clippers are well run.

Giannis also has not made any fuss about leaving. Probably because the Bucks are well run and surrounded him with a coaching staff and roster that allows him to compete.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Going 42-40 and losing in the playoffs 4-1 doesn't sound all that impressive.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Season and playoff results don't matter I guess.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

Name a more impressive team that had $65 million in cap space this summer. I'll wait.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

That's a strange conclusion to this conversation.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

But once again, the primary factor for both seemed to be geographic location.

When can he sign an extension in Milwaukee? Lots of guys signed that first extension, including Anthony Davis.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

No. The primary factor for Kawhi the entire time was a competent front office. It's why he froze out the Lakers and told the Raptors and Clippers what it would take to sign him. Raptors wouldn't commit that much and Clippers would. That's pretty much the story.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

The player would not take a salary or guarantee hit in that scenario.

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

So what? OKC didn't take any kind of value hit from Paul George's demand at all and got a greater haul than would have been expected on the open market for him alone because the Clippers were essentially trading assets for him and Kawhi.

Blake Griffin had his ass shipped off to Detroit less than a year after his team gave him a max and Ballmer declared him a Clipper for life. If we're so scandalized by players asking for trades, I see no reason not to be equally angry about the similar lack of loyalty from front offices.

The story all year was Kawhi was LA bound. The Raptors winning the title may have given him a reason to consider them but it seems clear that LA won based in large part on geography.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

The Clippers chose to move him. Blake Griffin is still getting paid the whole deal. Everyone is happy.

The Thunder were at the mercy of one player and a boatload of tampering. They could have started the rebuild a year earlier by never signing PG at all. Or they could have aligned themselves to be players in signing two of these starts themselves this offseason. PG committed to them and reneged less than a season later. In fact, reports have Kawhi and PG discussing and planning this last offseason. The least that can be done is to say "okay, PG, you wanted to play for another team all along. Well then your supermax is now a simple max and the years and salary are now synced up to what they would have been had you signed with any other team in the first place."

THE ENTIRE POINT of supermaxes was to keep players with their teams. The spirit of the rule has been defeated, so the rule should be tweaked.

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

I don't see how that's clear at all. The Lakers were reportedly not in consideration in the final few days. It seems rather clear to me that geography was, at best, a secondary consideration for him.

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Blake's not if he wouldn't have agreed to a max deal to play in Detroit in the first place. Seems pretty disloyal for front offices to collude with each other via the trade mechanism and leave a player like Blake in a worse off position.With none of the boatload of assets they just got for re-signing him. This idea that Presti and OKC are any kind of victims in this after getting the closest thing to a Herschel Walker deal in the history of the league is mindboggling to me.
How did George renege if he merely requested a trade and OKC had every right to determine whether to trade him or not? And if that's the definition that we're using for reneging, then the Clippers unquestionably reneged by calling Griffin a Clipper for life when pitching why he should sign there and then shipping him off to Detroit; Blake had no say in the matter the way OKC did. Maybe the least we can do in that case is to say they still have to pay his salary and have it count against their cap space despite his no longer being there. We have to incentivize loyalty both ways after all.
I agree they're not working as intended, but those same owners were the ones who wanted to do away with non-capped salaries and even longer contracts in the first place. And the biggest reason those contracts aren't working as intended has little to do with player collusion or anything like that but comes down to front office assessments of value alone. Most of the teams with eligible supermax players are shipping them out before they become eligible (Butler and the Bulls), simply winding the clock down and not offering it (Walker and the Hornets), or massively regretting offering them at all (Westbrook and Wall).

During the NBA finals one of the biggest discussions I saw was if winning the title gave Toronto any hope of him staying rather than going to LA.

He did play the Lakers though. Reports by basketball expert IMU are now the Clippers thing including PG started last offseason.

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To cite my argument, there is a NBA reporter named Adrian Wojnarowski who seems pretty well connected who felt strong enough to come out and say that warm weather and playing at home was his top priority.

https://clipperholics.com/2018/12/17/la-clippers-rumors-kawhi-still-wants-los-angeles/

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

That was written 6 months ago

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Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

It proved 100% correct.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

If it was 100% correct then the debate would have been between the Lakers and Clippers. Instead it was between the Raptors and Clippers. Out of those three teams the Raptors and Clippers both have a reputation of being first class organizations and the Lakers are a clown show. Seems like the evidence he values competency the most is much stronger than the evidence he values geography the most.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Put the bulls in the west and they'd have zero playoff series wins.

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Hard cap for everyone. If you couldn't go above the cap to sign your own players the league would look a lot different.

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6 months ago he said it was the Clippers because of weather and proximity to home. He signed with the Clippers. I will continue to think geography was what drove the decision. You can think it is because the Clippers are a first class organization even though he chose to leave two other first class organizations so far in his career.

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You do not talk to me like that! I work too hard to deal with this stuff! I work too hard! I'm an important member of the CSFMB! I drive a Dodge Stratus!

You are not viewing the Thunder as a business, and that is your problem. You have no idea how this will affect future revenues and a multitude of other factors. How many millions did they specifically put into Paul George/Thunder marketing after they signed him to the contract? What spending did the organization do since they were counting on a certain level of ticket and merchandising sales over the course of George's contract?

On the basketball side, first round draft picks are still lottery tickets. The Clippers aren't going to be in the lottery anytime soon, and I don't even know what protections were placed on any of them.

OKC was told they would have an unhappy star player on their team if they did not trade PG. They had a gun to their head, and you can attempt to (and fail to) spin it however you like.

I'm going to guess that as an individual you're very 'pro Labor?'

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Rick Hahn is the best GM in baseball.

Nobody is happier with how this offseason went than Sam Presti. This is a very amusing spin.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

That's never stopped you before. Go get 'em, kid!

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Ecclesiastes 5:8

I guess I'm not following your train of thought. How does a hard salary cap stop LeBron, Durant, Kawhi, Irving, Butler etc from leaving? Teams will still find ways to find salary space for the tip-toppiest of top players, will they not?