During the 2022 NFL offseason, the Kansas City Chiefs traded Tyreek Hill to the Miami Dolphins, splitting up its championship-winning WR-QB duo that were drafted by the franchise in back-to-back years. The Chiefs did it because Hill was up for a contract extension, and rather than make both Patrick Mahomes and Hill two of the highest paid players in the league, they chose to trade one star for the flexibility to build around the other. The Chiefs have won two more Super Bowls and lost a third in the years since the trade.

I’m reminded of that trade every so often when I hear NBA fans and media moan about the salary cap and how the Collective Bargaining Agreement prevents teams from keeping their “homegrown” stars (i.e., players they drafted). I was reminded of it again in the latest round of takes following the Jaylen Brown trade, especially when it comes to a proposed fix that misses the point entirely.

“How the Jaylen Brown trade exposes the harsh new reality of the NBA CBA,” read one headline.

“I just still viscerally believe that something is wrong with the system that turns these homegrown stars… into albatross contracts,” Zach Lowe griped on his podcast this week. He wondered if the Nuggets could end up in a similar position with Jamal Murray, who helped them to a title in 2023 alongside the handsomely paid Nikola Jokic.

Maybe. There are a ton of reasons the Celtics traded Jaylen Brown, maybe some that have nothing to do with his salary. There are good write-ups about how declining local-market TV revenue and salary cap projections are unexpected problems for front offices to navigate. I’m sympathetic to teams that thought they were operating with a certain salary cap that is now projected to come in short by as much as $35 million.

But simplifying the Brown trade and others like it into some sort of punishment the NBA has levied against teams with homegrown stars is wrong. 

Now, about that fix I hinted at before. It’s the proposal that teams should get some sort of salary cap relief for signing players they drafted has been around for years. The idea is that while a maximum-salary player can earn a salary worth 30-35% of a team’s cap, the team's cap hit should actually be lower, provided the team drafted the player.

Brad Stevens brought up this idea during his press conference to explain the trade. 

“We may not be sitting here if there was a rule in the CBA that said the guys that you drafted that you sign to 35% supermaxes count as 25% cap,” Stevens said. 

To my surprise, that idea is making the rounds on social media with almost unanimous support. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. Fans love their stars, generally want them to make as much money as possible, and don’t care about the pockets of billionaires. I get it.

But my visceral problem lies with the NBA stepping in and implying that one way of team building is inherently better than another. Or, to put it more plainly, that drafting players is the “right way” to build a team.

If you give a break to teams that draft their stars, then teams that sign or trade for them are at a disadvantage. Should the Pacers not get the same break as the Celtics or Nuggets because they traded for Tyrese Haliburton? Or the Thunder because Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was drafted by the Clippers and traded after his first season?

ESPN’s Bobby Marks proposed that players traded on their rookie contract should also count toward this cap break. It’s a smart caveat but distracts from the real problem.

This isn’t a CBA issue. It’s a negotiating one. 

For years, NBA front offices operated with a paint-by-numbers approach to contracts. Generally speaking, All-Stars got the max, established rotation players got the mid-level, and bench players were signed to the minimum. For years, if you were one of the 400-plus NBA players, you were mostly signed to one of those three salary sizes.

General managers rarely negotiated with agents. Players used their ultimate leverage tool – their fragile happiness – to pressure organizations to fork over a max contract or risk their getting disgruntled. Then, in many cases, they got traded anyway (then ironically complained about being disrespected).

I’ll stop here to note that I’m not pro-business or pro-labor. I’m just pointing out the absurdity of a system that was broken long before Jaylen Brown and AnalyticsGate. Front offices were always allowed to negotiate contracts that fell somewhere between starter money and superstar money and didn’t. Granted, the addition of the first and second apron makes it more difficult to pay anyone and everyone the max, but isn’t that the point of a salary-capped sport?

Yes, the second apron is built to save owners money, but it’s also meant as a hard cap that promotes parity and prevents a particularly rich owner from turning his/her team into the Yankees or the Dodgers of basketball.

Now, teams will be forced to negotiate with their players. The problem isn’t that the Celtics didn’t get some sort of cap break in order to keep their overpaid star, it’s that they overpaid their star in the first place. Had Stevens negotiated Brown’s salary down by $10 million per year, he may not have been sitting at that press conference.

Likewise, if the Nuggets trade Murray, it won’t be because of some unfairness. It’ll be because all but one or two starters can be considered overpaid. The Christian Braun contract doesn’t look good right now. Murray had never been an All-Star when he signed his latest deal that pays him at the same scale as Luka Doncic. The Nuggets, Celtics and other teams like them dug these holes for themselves as the new CBA, just three years old, was first being phased in.

There will be occasions when teams have to make a choice. Just like the Chiefs had to choose between Mahomes and Hill (it was always going to be Mahomes). 

That’s the nature of a real salary-capped sport. For years, the NBA operated with a blurry salary cap. The new CBA tightened loopholes and forced teams to be smarter about how they spent their money. If you want salary cap loopholes, get rid of the cap.

Again, the point here is to promote parity, not punish fans or players. (Players receive 51% of BRI under the new agreement. When players like Jaylen Brown eventually get paid less, then other players will get paid more.)

The NBA is in a correction stage. There will be more surprising trades and salary dumps. Eventually, GMs, agents and players will accept the environment has shifted and that being eligible for a max contract and being a max player are two different things.

When everyone realizes that, your homegrown players will get to stay home.