The NBA’s offseason is far from over. As we saw last summer, when Damian Lillard was traded to Milwaukee in late September and Jrue Holiday was flipped from Portland to Boston on October 1, the trade market stays open into the fall.
We also could still see impactful moves on the free agent market occurring much later in the offseason, as was the case a year ago when Derrick Jones and P.J. Washington – two key members of the Mavericks’ team that made the NBA Finals – signed their respective contracts during the second half of August (Washington signed with the Hornets before being traded to Dallas later in the season).
Still, the pace of the offseason action has certainly slowed down since the start of July, giving us an opportunity to look back and reflect on all that’s gone down in the last few weeks.
From one of the biggest storylines of the summer (the impact of the new tax apron rules) to some under-the-radar developments (like the structure of Josh Okogie‘s new deal with the Suns), we’re taking a closer look today at some of the more curious offseason subplots.
Let’s dive in…
Has the impact of the new apron restrictions been overstated?
The concept of the tax apron has existed in the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement for years, and a second apron was implemented in 2023, but the 2024 offseason is the first time all the new apron-related restrictions introduced in the current CBA have been in place. Those new restrictions affect the trade market most significantly, with teams operating over the first tax apron not permitted to take back more salary than they send out and teams over the second apron prohibited from aggregating player salaries.
While it’s true that these rules have made it challenging for teams with high payrolls to make moves as easily as they used to, I think they’ve also become a convenient scapegoat for teams to justify certain roster decisions.
