{"id":2047903,"date":"2026-07-17T10:00:37","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T07:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2047903"},"modified":"2026-07-17T10:00:37","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T07:00:37","slug":"nba-players-association-has-new-leadership-and-a-renewed-emphasis-to-undo-the-last-cba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2047903","title":{"rendered":"NBA Players Association has new leadership and a renewed emphasis to undo the last CBA"},"content":{"rendered":"
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LAS VEGAS \u2014 All offseason, NBA teams have waged battles with the league\u2019s apron system, the onerous machine that the league and its players\u2019 union agreed to and instituted as part of the 2023 collective bargaining agreement. It has led to the Boston Celtics, New York Knicks and others losing beloved players to avoid the financial and roster-building restrictions that come with high payrolls. It has put franchises in a bind as they worked through a byzantine economic model.<\/p>\n

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While teams have griped about its impact, the NBA\u2019s players have their issues with it as well. Last weekend in Las Vegas, as the National Basketball Players Association debuted its new executive director, David Kelly, he and NBPA president Fred VanVleet made it clear they are not fans of the second apron or its impact.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not good for fans. Not good for players. I don\u2019t think the (general managers) love it, although they may not say it on the record. Coaches don\u2019t love it. The only people who really seem to really love it are the owners,\u201d Kelly said in a July 10 interview with The Athletic<\/em>. \u201cThen, I think it\u2019s gone too far. So whether it\u2019s an unwinding of it, or a softening of the apron, or tweaking it, we can call it whatever we will. But \u2026 I do think it\u2019s gone too far.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the NBPA charts a path forward under Kelly and VanVleet, who was elected as the NBPA president last July, it has clearly emphasized unwinding the economic system installed just a few years ago.<\/p>\n

The current CBA continues to guarantee players between 49 and 51 percent of all basketball-related income, which landed at $11.676 billion for the 2025-26 season. The players earned the maximum this past season; in fact, total player contracts and benefits surpassed that share with a $317 million overage, according to a league memo sent to NBA teams.<\/p>\n

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Ex-NFL union boss DeMaurice Smith weighs in on the NBA’s Kawhi Leonard saga<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
{“@context”:”https:\/\/schema.org”,”@type”:”VideoObject”,”@id”:”https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/video\/AomGYfl6WQc1M5X\/”,”url”:”https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/video\/AomGYfl6WQc1M5X\/”,”name”:”Ex-NFL union boss DeMaurice Smith weighs in on the NBA’s Kawhi Leonard saga”,”description”:””What would you do, if you knew you wouldn’t get caught? … Cheating can’t be your baseline.””,”uploadDate”:”2026-07-16T16:20:39.455Z”,”duration”:”PT3M58S”,”thumbnailUrl”:”https:\/\/cdn-media.theathletic.com\/video-stream\/auto-thumbnail\/AomGYfl6WQc1M5X\/ROAtOAl0uyEC.0000000.jpg”,”contentUrl”:”https:\/\/video.nyt.com\/athletic\/streams\/AomGYfl6WQc1M5X\/ROAtOAl0uyEC\/ROAtOAl0uyEC.m3u8″,”transcript”:”If you’re in a fight against someone with more money and more power and more weapons and all of the metaphorical and in the case of the government, literal ways, the rule of law is meant in theory to protect those who have less. It is a system in which the people who don’t have all the money and the guns and all that stuff can be protected with a suit of armor in which they can walk into a courtroom and stand with even footing against the richest people in the country. With, with a chance of winning. Right, but the other thing that comes from that, and it’s more important with the ability to actually walk in court, it establishes a little bit of fear on the other side in the hopes that they won’t break the law. And that’s more important than the former, right? Because, well, look, if, if the reason why the, the owners in all of these leagues are so dangerous. Is I know, and it would keep me up at night, what they can do. Without, almost without any recourse, without, without some FBI agent saying anything, without the Department of Justice saying anything, without the SEC saying anything. Imagine, and I talk about it in my book, and it’s one of the first lines in the book, if you had the power to do anything, what would you do if you knew you wouldn’t get caught? Once you have come to a conclusion. That it is highly unlikely that you are ever going to get caught, that you’re gonna have to pay back money, that you’re gonna have to go to jail, that you’re gonna have to have public shame. Once you’ve reached that point in, in your either professional career or the amount of money that you have, I have come to the conclusion that that is when you see people behaving poorly. I used to say this to to our players because every now and then people didn’t understand why I was filing grievances to enforce rules under the collective bargaining agreement. Cheating can never be the baseline. Full stop. Cheating can’t be your baseline. Corruption can’t be your baseline. Why does that matter in sports particularly? The fundamental necessary ingredients for sport, sport requires fairness and rule following. Entertainment does not. Entertainment only asks for an audience. If you lose the fact that people believe that it’s any given Sunday. They believe that the rules are being followed. They believe that someone is trying to engender fairness. You’ve undermined your product. It’s the risking of everything that makes it worth watching. For the basketball players, football players, hockey players, baseball, all the players, and even the players who are playing in the World Cup. You look at the, the insane effort. And the industry that that these players willingly put themselves through game after game. What do they absolutely insist upon? Fairness. And rule following So why on God’s green earth, would you come to a conclusion that you are going to expect less when it comes to the macro way in which the league is being operated? Why would you choose less fairness in the macro world than the fairness and rule following that you absolutely would insist on, on the pitch? The league, the way it’s run, the collective bargaining agreements, the business decisions that you make together have to be enforced.”,”ineligibleRegion”:[“BI”,”BY”,”CD”,”CF”,”CU”,”IQ”,”IR”,”KP”,”LB”,”LY”,”ML”,”NI”,”RU”,”SD”,”SO”,”SS”,”SY”,”UA”,”VE”,”YE”,”ZW”],”publisher”:{“@type”:”NewsMediaOrganization”,”@id”:”https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/#publisher”,”name”:”The Athletic”,”url”:”https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/”,”foundingDate”:”2016-01-25″,”logo”:{“@type”:”ImageObject”,”@id”:”https:\/\/theathletic.com\/app\/themes\/athletic\/assets\/img\/the-athletic-wordmark-black.png”,”url”:”https:\/\/theathletic.com\/app\/themes\/athletic\/assets\/img\/the-athletic-wordmark-black.png”,”contentUrl”:”https:\/\/theathletic.com\/app\/themes\/athletic\/assets\/img\/the-athletic-wordmark-black.png”,”creditText”:”The Athletic”,”height”:”60″,”width”:”435″},”publishingPrinciples”:”https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/athletic\/edit-guidelines\/”,”sameAs”:”https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Athletic”},”author”:[{“@type”:”Person”,”name”:”The Athletic Staff”}]}<\/p>\n
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