NBA's new financial rules threaten dynasties: 'Harder choices' for top teams

The NBA is built on dynasties. At least, it always has been.

Bill Russell's Boston Celtics teams dominated the 1960s. The Larry Bird-Magic Johnson rivalry headlined the 1980s. The Chicago Bulls, Los Angeles Lakers and San Antonio Spurs followed with dynastic runs to define eras in the 1990s and 2000s.

And more recently, the 2010s belonged to LeBron James -- both his Miami Heat and Cleveland Cavaliers teams -- and the Stephen Curry-led Golden State Warriors.

But since the Warriors won back-to-back titles in 2017 and 2018, the NBA has seen seven different champions hoist the Larry O'Brien Trophy, the longest stretch of parity in league history. There have been 11 different finalists in that span, another league record. And in each of the past six postseasons, the defending champion has failed to reach the conference finals. The last time the NBA had a similar period of parity was in the late 1970s, when there were six different champions from 1975 to 1980 with eight different Finals teams.

Now, the league is closer than ever to a point where all 30 teams, if managed well, can compete for a championship, something NBA commissioner Adam Silver has repeatedly espoused as a goal during the past two collective bargaining agreements.

"I believe that parity of opportunity is good for the league," Silver told ESPN last month. "When more teams have a genuine chance at winning a championship, the competition on the court is more compelling, and fans in more markets are engaged.

"We didn't set out with the goal to have a different champion every year, and I'm not against dynasties so long as they are built within a fair system."

The question is whether that new system has fundamentally altered how the league and its teams operate. After decades of dynasties ruling the sport, has the new CBA brought them to an end? Or, instead, are we sitting on the precipice of the next one?

Running it back is getting expensive

In June, after the Oklahoma City Thunder claimed their first NBA title, Thunder general manager Sam Presti was asked whether the league's salary cap aprons would hinder the small-market franchise's ability to be a perennial championship contender.

"There's a limited amount of experience that teams have with these new rules," Presti said. "We only have a few that have been in situations where [the aprons are] really impacting them.

"So, I wouldn't be too quick to predetermine, 'Oh, this is the way this works.'"

Plenty of people, however, don't share Presti's view. As a result, many across the league believe dynasties could become a thing of the past -- despite the Thunder's seemingly wide-open title window.

"Our system will allow successful teams to stay together," Silver said, "but those teams will need to make harder choices."

The restrictive first and second aprons have already forced higher-spending teams to rethink their roadmaps. The Boston Celtics, once in danger of becoming the first $500 million roster in NBA history -- shaved hundreds of millions of dollars off next season's payroll by trading Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis, key players in their 2024 title-winning roster, in the offseason, plus losing big men Al Horford and Luke Kornet in free agency.

The Cleveland Cavaliers -- the lone team over the second apron -- lost Ty Jerome, a finalist for Sixth Man of the Year, to the Memphis Grizzlies in free agency because Cleveland, too, had a limit on how much it could spend.

The Denver Nuggets were forced to trade an unprotected 2032 first-rounder, their only first-round pick available to move, along with Michael Porter Jr., to get back Cameron Johnson, along with massive savings this season and next. Denver used those funds to fortify its bench and plan a new long-term contract extension for Christian Braun that is expected next summer.

These, though, are the kinds of choices that Silver, and the league, intended when they crafted the current rules. Doing so has put a premium on every move -- and every dollar.

Roster mistakes can doom a dynastic run

For a team to buck the current trend, and emerge as a potential dynasty, it's not just about collecting talent, which is hard enough. A team also needs to avoid negative or overpriced contracts.

The system, more than ever, prioritizes flexibility. It hurts teams that aren't constantly focusing on maintaining it and punishes franchises that sacrifice it to fuel a title run.

"You have to be right on every decision," one Western Conference scout said. "Now, you have to look at things in not a one-year window, but a three-year window. You literally can't mess anything up. It puts pressure on the organization to think differently and smartly to make sure you are best-positioned to make the right decisions."

Last summer, the LA Clippers didn't re-sign Paul George, allowing him to become the first All-Star to change teams as an unrestricted free agent since the Clippers signed Kawhi Leonard five years earlier. George signed a four-year, $212 million max contract with the Philadelphia 76ers.

Though the Clippers were questioned about the move at the time, they focused on flexibility over retaining an extremely talented but aging star. Just over a year into that deal, the Clippers are coming off a 50-win season, added several quality veterans this summer and can remake their roster in summer 2027.

The 76ers, meanwhile, got only 41 games of middling production from George -- who underwent another knee surgery this offseason -- and are also dealing with the uncertainty of another max-contract player, center Joel Embiid. It puts their chances of being a championship threat into serious doubt thanks to having more than $100 million invested in those two players each season.

"I think the copycat nature of the league will try to have teams focusing more on depth and having balance and a 'next man up' sort of mentality," an Eastern Conference scout said. "From that perspective, there's some validity to it, especially in this cap environment with the aprons ... it's so hard. The whole 'Big 3' thing is hard to pull off, for obvious reasons.

"Taking up such a big percentage of your cap with those limitations on top of it, when you get close to the aprons, it is just really difficult to build a great team."

It has also led to other teams prioritizing depth. The New York Knicks have crafted a starting five of Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, Mikal Bridges, OG Anunoby and Karl-Anthony Towns through free agency, trades and some savvy negotiation on contract extensions that should allow them to have a several-year run as a contender while still staying below the second apron. The Cavaliers hope their core four of Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley, Darius Garland and Jarrett Allen -- all under 30 -- can stay together.

The Orlando Magic, meanwhile, went all-in, getting Desmond Bane this summer from the Grizzlies in the hopes of creating a quartet of Bane, Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner and Jalen Suggs.

"Our goal isn't to win the East. The goal is to win a championship," Magic team president Jeff Weltman said after the Bane deal. "And the first step in doing that is to move our team forward and get ourselves into that conversation. I look at it like we're a factor now."

No team is better positioned to navigate the league's financial picture than the defending champion Thunder. Oklahoma City signed its three stars -- Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams and Chet Holmgren -- to massive contract extensions this summer. But the Thunder also surrounded them with veterans on sensible contracts and players on rookie deals, which, along with having more draft picks in the years to come, will allow the Thunder to avoid the repeater tax until the end of the decade.

"The fact Isaiah Joe and Jaylin Williams can't get on the floor [for Oklahoma City] speaks to just how deep they are," the East scout said. "Those guys would play a ton for most teams."

The league's talent -- and its dispersion -- has never been greater

Many stars hope to have their say on how the next few playoff runs shake out.

The Houston Rockets, after a surprising rise to the second seed in the West last season, added Kevin Durant to burnish their title chances. The Lakers believe they have done the same after retooling their roster around Luka Doncic and James. The Warriors will, too, once they resolve Jonathan Kuminga's restricted free agency, with a full season of Curry, Jimmy Butler III and Draymond Green playing together. The Clippers added even more depth -- albeit in older players -- by landing John Collins, Bradley Beal and Chris Paul this summer.

All of that highlights the talent around the league, particularly in the Western Conference, which only adds to the challenge of repeating.

"There is typically a changing of the stars that happens earlier, where the old guys have declined and they are out and there's a new crop of them that has emerged, but the number of them stays consistent," one East executive said. "But the older guys -- LeBron, Steph, KD, Harden -- are playing at a high level deep into their 30s, so there are more stars than we've ever seen before. ...

"Maybe expansion will dilute that a little more, and maybe when Steph and LeBron and those guys finally age out, but as long as things are trending the way they are and guys are playing at a high level longer, with health protocols and stuff, it could be the new normal."

Three of the 15 players selected to last season's All-NBA teams -- James, Curry and James Harden -- are 35 or older, including James, who is the league's oldest player at 40. Then, on the other end of the spectrum, three players -- Jalen Williams, Cade Cunningham and Mobley -- were on rookie-scale deals this past season, and Anthony Edwards is under 25. Doncic and Victor Wembanyama missed out because of injuries, leaving them short of the 65-game threshold for awards, highlighting the depth of the talent pool.

"I am generally pro-parity," one East executive said. "I'm pro lots of teams having a chance to win championships. But I think that's a few things beyond the CBA rules. I think there's more talent around the league, and it's really f---ing hard to win."

Can a dynasty rise again?

All of this leaves us with two questions: Will the league remain in this state of parity? And, if it does, is that a good thing?

The NBA's other era of parity, the late 1970s, coincided with the ABA-NBA merger in 1976 that introduced four new teams and lots of new talent to the league. The past few years have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has contributed to the salary cap basically remaining flat for three seasons. Player contracts, meanwhile, continued to rise by their standard 5% to 8% each year, causing a cascading effect on teams' financials.

"We've seen a lot of issues with financially all-in teams being able to pull things off the past few years," one East scout said, "[but] I don't think people have realized how quickly the cap is going to rise moving forward. It isn't baseball where there's no salary cap, but we'll be back to where there's going to be the ability to take on money that we just haven't seen teams be able to."

The tax aprons will grow at the same rate as the salary cap, allowing for a wider buffer for teams to operate in. And there are several new flexible tools, such as the midlevel exception to acquire players via trade.

Though we might not return to the days of the summer free agent frenzy, the league is embracing the player movement that currently exists. And if there is a choice between two, parity trumps a few teams sitting on top for years at a time. "The reality is that a certain level of player movement is healthy for creating a true 30-team league," Silver said.

Arguably the NBA's most famous dynasty, the 1990s Chicago Bulls had Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen and coach Phil Jackson as the three constants of their two three-peat teams across that decade. But every other player on the roster from the 1993 title team had been replaced by general manager Jerry Krause by the time the Bulls won again in 1996. Similar stories can be found looking at the Kobe Bryant era in Los Angeles and the San Antonio Spurs teams in the 2000s.

"I do think talent dispersal is good," one executive said. "It's no fun if one team has all the talent. There's a throughline between the Spurs teams, they had Tim [Duncan], Tony [Parker], and Manu [Ginobili], but the role players turn over.

"So OKC, yeah, Chet, Shai and Jalen can stay together, but Aaron Wiggins and Lu Dort and [Alex] Caruso and these other guys may have to go as those guys progress and get expensive."

That's what makes the current direction of the league so interesting -- and why there are diverging opinions on whether parity is good for business.

"If you mean, 'Good for the 30 owners, Adam's bosses,' then yes, because they all have a chance, and every team can get a true chance to win," one executive said.

"If it's, 'Is it good for league revenues?' I imagine it's better when there is a singularly great player leading a dynastic team -- Bird, Magic, Jordan, Kobe, Shaq, LeBron, Steph -- I would imagine that's better for business."

But parity among NBA champions could become the new normal. It could also become a historical footnote when the Thunder rattle off the league's next three-peat, like the run in the late 1970s before the Lakers and Celtics started trading banners.

What is undeniable, though, is that Silver's ultimate goal -- parity of championship opportunity -- might have arrived.

"It's too early to make any sort of proclamation," Silver said, "but the fact that we will have had seven different champions over the past seven years is a good indication that we are headed in the right direction."