The NBA’s second apron rules have already made free agency boring

Only 4 NBA teams are in the second apron. That speaks volumes.

We anticipated that the NBA’s second apron rules would have a major ripple effect on the league landscape. I don’t think anyone, sans some general managers, saw what they would do to free agency.

Roughly two days into the NBA’s open market period, we’ve seen most squads around the league approach their spending cautiously. Rather than throw around money willy-nilly like in years past, it is clear that teams are noticeably more gunshy about throwing around monster contracts, especially to non-star players.

While most of the big fish are off the board — like Paul George with the Philadelphia 76ers and Klay Thompson with the Dallas Mavericks — there is a glut of “middle-class” talent still waiting for new commitments. It’s made the whole familiar free agency exercise, once a highly-anticipated staple of the NBA calendar, a bit rote and anticlimactic.

What happened to the game we love?

Perhaps most importantly, as it stands, just four NBA teams have willingly stayed in the NBA’s second apron. Here they are, as follows, with their unique ownership situation in parentheses:

• Boston Celtics (current owners are selling)
• Phoenix Suns (uh, Mat Ishbia …)
• Dallas Mavericks (sold in December 2023)
• Minnesota Timberwolves (still up in the air)

Everyone else, including recent NBA champions such as Nikola Jokic’s Denver Nuggets and Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Milwaukee Bucks, have trod lightly when it comes to the second apron. That speaks volumes.

It’s worth noting that the second apron isn’t technically a hard cap, even though the discussion has veered that way. Teams currently sitting in the second apron can keep extending players already on their roster as much as they please. It’s more that sitting in the second apron for an extended period is a calculated risk that NBA squads have to be prepared for, given the lack of on-the-fly flexibility it presents in here and now and the future.

Because once you’re in the second apron, most maneuverability is gone, and you’re at the mercy of hoping that life doesn’t get in the way.

(Hint: It often does.)

Teams like the Nuggets and Bucks may well enter the second apron in the near future once they recognize it’s time to really maximize the primes of Jokic and Antetokounmpo. They just weren’t going to do it for names like Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, even with him being as dependable as he is. I’m also not sure what it means that the four current second-apron NBA teams all have chaotic ownership situations to some degree, but it has to have some kind of correlation.

In the end, as basketball fans, we all lose here.

There will be less player movement on the macro, and great teams will be more cautious with their spending. That, in turn, will reduce some of the wonderful drama we’ve come to expect from the NBA offseason. So, don’t expect the second-apron group to meaningfully expand in scope anytime soon.

In the name of forced, frustrating artificial parity, this is exactly what the NBA wanted. It’s a lot less entertaining, that’s for sure.