Jaylen Brown’s contract extension isn’t done yet.
A lot of people, including myself, are a little surprised by that, even though most of us, including myself, don’t think it’s that big of a big deal.
So if most people checking on the story believe the deal is getting done, yet most of those people are also surprised by the situation, then what the hell is going on here?
From what I can tell, there are some issues connected to the new CBA that are complicating things for Brown, and they involve the potential for a trade.
On a recent podcast, Zach Lowe said “from all that everything I heard, it's a bells and whistles on the supermax thing. Player options, trade kickers, all that kind of stuff.”
Well, player options and trade kickers are a little more complicated than they used to be.
Under the old CBA, a player could be given a 15% trade kicker, even on a supermax deal and it wouldn’t really be a sticking point. By rule, a player can’t get any more than the maximum amount allowable, so a player on a max contract couldn’t get a 15% raise when he was traded. Adding a trade kicker didn't matter. Guys got them as sort of a “just in case” thing in a weird financial year.
Well, now we’re entering a few weird financial years.
The NBA salary cap is expected to rise by 10% per year, possibly for the duration of the CBA. The new cap-smoothing provision will slowly phase in the integration of new media money, which could be three times the $2.6 billion dollar deal the league got last time (you remember the cap spike that allowed Kevin Durant to go to Golden State, right? Cap smoothing will help prevent that). At the same time, max player contracts increase 8% each year. Suddenly, the NBA is facing the rare occurrence where cap increases outpace even the richest player contract increases.
That means a trade kicker is meaningful to Brown. A supermax player extension uses 35% of the cap in the first year of his deal to set the amount, but then it gives raises of 8%. The second-through-fifth season are no longer attached to a salary cap percentage. So each year that passes, Brown stands to add to his salary should he be traded. He'd be eligible to get up to the equivalent of 35% of the cap in whichever season he got traded. Of course, the Celtics would prefer not to have that in his deal, because it complicates the math and it could give other teams pause.
If Boston gets to a point where they decide to move Brown (or he decides for them), it’ll likely be because he’s not exactly the right fit anymore, most likely because of Kristaps Porzingis’ fit with Jayson Tatum. Brown won’t be moved if he continues to grow and is a better fit next to Tatum. Teams know this, so they don’t want complications of trade kickers thrown into the mix where they’d have to give Brown a raise to bring him on.
The player option is also a complication, because it adds a layer of control for Brown and it potentially takes a year away from a new team. Brown won’t have a no-trade clause, though he can’t be traded next season if he signs the extension. Beyond that, though, Boston would have all the leverage in a trade. In that situation, Brown would certainly love to have an opt out a year earlier to either test his market as an unrestricted free agent or sign a new deal at the new 35% max.
Either way, that's not an appealing option for Boston or a potential trade partner.
Brown and his camp are probably standing strong with their demands because they know the new CBA has increased the odds of him moving. Brown finally made All-NBA, which should have ended any trade speculation. Instead this new agreement just put them right back in the crosshairs because Boston's roster is too expensive to maintain.
Under the old deal, trading for Porzingis still would have made the Celtics expensive, but the issue would have only been ownership's willingness to pay the tax. Now there's a second apron involved, and beyond the tax, now there's an issue of a lot of tools that could be used to improve the team mid-season going away if Boston went over that line. The Celtics very clearly don't want to operate in that area.
Brown and his agent can do the math. And no matter how many times Brad Stevens says he wants Brown around for a long, long time the math says that time frame can change quickly when decision time comes around. The semantics game of what Stevens wants versus what the team is able to do financially means Brown's side has to prepare themselves for the possibility of a trade.
It’s a possibility that's a bit more likely thanks to the new CBA. The bells and whistles attached to Brown’s extension won’t prevent it from getting done, but they are louder than they’d have been if the league was still operating under its old rules.