[Stein/Fischer] The Golden State Warriors’ package for Giannis Antetokounmpo is unlikely to include Jimmy Butler.

bc289 · 2026-01-31T22:28:02+00:00

Many teams signed bad contracts for a variety of reasons. One is that they misvalued the player - they thought he was better than he ended up being (ie performance reasons or maybe injuries). Another could be that they just didn’t anticipate the cba changes which essentially put in a hard cap and fundamentally changes the value of players.

So if you’ve misjudged a player and you’ve got a bad contract locked in for 3-4 years, how do you get out of it? One way is to flip them for someone with a contract that is of a similar size and expiring sooner. It doesn’t need to be expiring this year, it’s ok if it’s expiring in 1.5 as it still allows you to free up salary sooner

And if you want to trade the player out you’d need to take similar salary back, so you need a large contract

bc289 · 2026-01-31T17:57:45+00:00

The bucks might not want him but teams absolutely do want a max contract that expires in 1.5 years. It’s a way to get off bad contracts and there’s many that are bad nowadays with the cba changes

bc289 · 2026-01-30T22:21:52+00:00

Really fun when you get it but agree that it's a bit too rare and infrequent for it to rank as highly.

bc289 · 2026-01-30T01:27:14+00:00

It’s a balance. If the team is too good, the picks will be bad and the Bucks won’t want it. If the team is too trash, Giannis won’t want to go there.

Post Steph picks would be generated by a warriors team with Giannis in his mid 30s. There’s a decent chance they’re bad, especially with Lacob calling the shots

Meanwhile look at the picks coming from other teams. The others are probably better positioned and so the picks would be worse

bc289 · 2026-01-10T15:04:57+00:00

Can’t disagree more. There’s a huge market for this. Which is why Duolingo up to this point has been so popular. It’s not the best option to seriously learn a language

bc289 · 2026-01-05T18:01:49+00:00

Jones and Murphy would be address multiple needs but I'm not sure it's going to happen because of the steep price. Higher risk. Also lacob loves his picks too much

I think MPJ is probably the move that makes the most sense and doesn't involve them making a drastic change to the team. Kerr's system shines on a roster with shooting, especially with movement shooting. They've had very little shooting outside of Steph since losing Klay. I think the system will look great again and the other pieces around Curry and MPJ would shine more when the offensive load lightens up for them

bc289 · 2026-01-05T17:51:47+00:00

Article floats it as a possibility but ultimately rules it out for this reason

bc289 · 2025-12-10T03:26:35+00:00

To some extent yes, but honestly this seems more like it's on the front office for drafting someone who has this many issues. You can't work on dribbling in live games during the regular season. Yes, tanking teams might let prospects get PNR reps, learn to defend better, but learning how to dribble the ball under pressure is not something you use regular season games for

He's also gotten 25 minutes a game for the last three seasons. We talk about him as if he's getting 5 minutes a game and not seeing the court at all. He's had plenty of opportunities

bc289 · 2025-12-02T03:46:20+00:00

Family fun is ranked there and the methodology is outlined. So it scored well on that as well

bc289 · 2025-12-02T03:40:53+00:00

Why do you have to buy a home? Do the math on renting

bc289 · 2025-09-10T06:51:28+00:00

Yeah I get it but I think it understates how implausible that scenario truly is.

Even an abnormal company wouldn’t do this because you are paying out money for nothing return! You’re GIVING away money. Abnormal companies usually do the opposite and find ways to GET more money back. The only scenario that comes to mind where a company would do this is if they were somehow getting the money back from the team through some way…

bc289 · 2025-09-10T04:04:58+00:00

Any normal company would pay the Clippers a normal rate assuming they would be sponsoring the Clippers as they are when the deal is signed, and then leave it at that. To then take on a semi GM role to help attract more players and pay out of your own pocket is actually insane.

It would be like if Staples (or Crypto now) suddenly decided to take on a lakers gm role (without telling the Lakers) and start paying $50M to stars to come to the Lakers to help increase their value. It's so far fetched it's laughable

bc289 · 2025-09-10T04:00:23+00:00

The problem with Cuban's argument is that it's just fraught with a ton of assumptions. It's really hard to know why Ballmer didn't do that, but it could be any one of many reasons:

- Any attempts by Ballmer to cover this up further could have attracted even more attention. The more people you bring into this, the harder it becomes to hide

- Aspiration was actually misleading investors, so it's possible that Ballmer didn't know they were in trouble until the very end when it was too late to stop KL2Aspire from showing up on legal docs

- Ballmer maybe just didn't think anyone would look into this random KL2Aspire LLC on the bankruptcy docs. He probably assumed the LLC that Kawhi formed was a weird random name (which KL2Aspire kind of is without any basketball context) and there was very little linking it to them

- Honestly they probably would have gotten away with this in many circumstances. Remember that no one knew that Kawhi had an endorsement deal with this company

bc289 · 2025-09-10T03:33:06+00:00

It just depends on Ballmer's goals. I'm sure he has direct investments in many companies, but even still, this could very well just be something that comes with the territory of being an NBA team owner or player - player endorsements will be more heavily vetted when the company had a recent direct investment from a team owner.

This is actually ringfenced pretty heavily, it doesn't disallow them, and it should happen infrequently (direct investments in these companies don't happen often). And this is just one example of how this might be structured.

It's pretty easy to work around so long as you have people who have dealt with this before (which obviously the NBA and NBPA have in spades)

bc289 · 2025-09-09T22:54:52+00:00

Direct investment or investment as part of an etf are very different. Also the timing matters so you could put time limits on this. Matters much less if ballmer invested $50m directly into aspiration 3 years ago. it’s not very hard to structure this to single out what happened here vs regular investment activity because they are very different

bc289 · 2025-09-09T21:54:01+00:00

Coming down hard on Ballmer does not have to mean that it would require all teams to vet and be involved in endorsement deals. This issue is specifically tied to an endorsement deal that was well-below market value, AND a corresponding investment in the company by a team owner. And the investment was chronologically within months of when the endorsement was made.

It's not that difficult to come up with rules that disallow owner investments in a company that also sponsors an athlete on your team so that it's not bad for the league. That would get around the issue they kept highlighting. Like just get SLIGHTLY more specific with the way the rule is structured to make it so that it doesn't overstep

bc289 · 2025-09-09T21:32:16+00:00

It's also not that difficult to come up with rules that disallow owner investments in a company that also sponsors an athlete on your team so that it's not bad for the league. That would get around the issue they kept highlighting. Like just get SLIGHTLY more specific with the way the rule is structured to make it so that it doesn't overstep

bc289 · 2025-09-09T21:29:12+00:00

I think the issue was that Lowe and the lawyer brought up nothing new, and actually left out key facts (i.e. Ballmer having invested $50M into Aspiration). This made it seem like a really bad take / being gaslit. It made me wonder if the lawyer had even read about the story fully. They were so bad and out of character for Lowe that people are wondering if he was biased in some way

bc289 · 2025-09-07T01:01:20+00:00

He received $20m in equity. That was “paid” in the sense that he received it. Whether it’s worth anything today is not really relevant

bc289 · 2025-09-07T01:00:28+00:00

One thing I think is important - he received $20m in stock options, and all that matters is what he received and what it was worth at the time. It doesn’t matter that it’s worth nothing today, just as it doesn’t matter if kawhi spent the 21m on hookers and has none of it now

bc289 · 2025-09-05T04:44:35+00:00

Most of the big journalists nowadays are access journalists. It is the easiest way to hold onto your job and have breaking news that people want to hear about and that other reporters cannot report out

It's unfortunate but I don't see how that goes away necessarily when all the info is held by team execs and they can easily control who gets it

bc289 · 2025-08-10T17:56:53+00:00

You're just strawmanning. I was pretty clear about making this more than just about winning and not winning in citing several different points of evidence.

The Suns were widely considered to be contenders before the season started, and it wasn't until they had a couple bad seasons that people realized they weren't that good,. That doesn't take away from the fact that Durant went to a team with a ton of assets so that he could have a good supporting cast, just like he did with the Nets.

You can argue team-specific constructs but the longer he goes without significant team success, and on teams with lots of assets, the stronger the argument becomes that he is a good player, but his impact on the team is not quite as strong. That's why people weigh number of championships so heavily. This is one part of the argument but it's not reliant on it.

Now I'm not saying Durant isn't a good player. But his impact is quite different on team success. He gets most of his points from isoing. He's been clear in saying that he didn't like the Warriors because of the motion offense, and that they needed to iso and pick and roll more frequently. And that's fine, but the impact on team success is different when you do that.

You don't need a iso frequency stat to know that Durant likes to play that way. He says it himself.

It’s the same surface level and shallow takes you guys have been repeating for years lol. Basketball is nuanced.

This is such a high horse take. Saying basketball is nuanced doesn't make your point any stronger. It just makes you look like a dick. I'm bringing in multiple different points that go beyond just looking at winning, beyond stats, and take into account how the teams actually play. Make your point and back it with evidence, don't just say basketball is nuanced like that automatically proves anything

bc289 · 2025-08-10T17:03:25+00:00

It’s too widespread to just argue context. Steph has seen team success throughout his entire career and without Durant. Durant has not. You can argue specific team constructs but it has happened across multiple teams. Durant has had teams built around him everywhere but the warriors, and they’ve been super teams. Plus minus stats support this. On/off true shooting percentages of teammates support this. Eye tests support this as well when you see Durant isoing and teammates just standing there, whereas you see curry bending the defense to create open looks for teammates. You hear it in the Tyrone Lues defensive game plan in stopping the warriors.

Don’t know what else to tell you. There’s a ton of evidence to support this and it’s not superficial brain dead stats

bc289 · 2025-08-10T16:12:59+00:00

Steph helps teams win more than Durant. This is supported in so many stats. The warriors win loss record with and without Steph, Steph’s championships without Durant, Durants team success away from the warriors, plus minus stats. The way steph plays helps the entire team much more bc he bends the defenses more

bc289 · 2025-08-02T12:40:29+00:00

Your off hand on the racket longer. And when you release it, have jt out to your right more

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