Jun 30, 2026 · 44 min · 8 segments
Free agency night used to feel like pure fireworks. Now it feels like chess, cap math, and trade leverage, and we’re here for all of it. We’re back with an NBA free agency special that starts with the…
So I was doing some thinking today, and I think I texted you earlier.
I said...
Free agency is 100% different than it was, say, three to four years ago, right? It was always about what free agent we're going to sign
or
who's going to sign or who's going to go somewhere.
And the list of free agents were usually pretty long, right? You had a lot of notable names.
But beginning with the change in the collective bargaining agreement and all the new rule changes you have seen over the last couple of years, people sign big time extensions with their team and just kind of stay in put.
And that's what's taken off some of these notable free agents off the market.
You're getting these changes.
mega trades kind of before anything really happens.
And then third is the ability to assign your own players before a free agency starts.
So that's clear.
That's taken up a lot of like just in general, a lot of all these like who are going to sign? Who are the top ten free agents? Who are these big, big time free agents? You don't see that much anymore.
You're going to see a lot of the sign in trades.
You're going to see a lot of the normal trades, and then you're going to have the other type of mid level kind of players be signed.
What are your thoughts on that just to kind of begin?
Yeah, it's a lot to unpack.
It's just so different.
It's so, so different.
I mean, I remember even the last, I don't know, obviously 10, 15 years where you had a top maybe two or three free agents or maybe one huge one like LeBron in 2010 or Carmelo a couple of years after that.
and they're visiting, or Kawhi Leonard in 2019, where they're going to visit three or four franchises, and then you hear about, oh, how did the pitch go? It's just to what we are now, where I think it's very obvious all the rules are set, and the way you can sign and extend your players, and how you could...
So it's all set up for teams to really keep their players.
So I was doing some thinking today, and I think I texted you earlier.
I said...
Free agency is 100% different than it was, say, three to four years ago, right? It was always about what free agent we're going to sign
or
who's going to sign or who's going to go somewhere.
And the list of free agents were usually pretty long, right? You had a lot of notable names.
But beginning with the change in the collective bargaining agreement and all the new rule changes you have seen over the last couple of years, people sign big time extensions with their team and just kind of stay in put.
And that's what's taken off some of these notable free agents off the market.
You're getting these changes.
mega trades kind of before anything really happens.
And then third is the ability to assign your own players before a free agency starts.
So that's clear.
That's taken up a lot of like just in general, a lot of all these like who are going to sign? Who are the top ten free agents? Who are these big, big time free agents? You don't see that much anymore.
You're going to see a lot of the sign in trades.
You're going to see a lot of the normal trades, and then you're going to have the other type of mid level kind of players be signed.
What are your thoughts on that just to kind of begin?
Yeah, it's a lot to unpack.
It's just so different.
It's so, so different.
I mean, I remember even the last, I don't know, obviously 10, 15 years where you had a top maybe two or three free agents or maybe one huge one like LeBron in 2010 or Carmelo a couple of years after that.
and they're visiting, or Kawhi Leonard in 2019, where they're going to visit three or four franchises, and then you hear about, oh, how did the pitch go? It's just to what we are now, where I think it's very obvious all the rules are set, and the way you can sign and extend your players, and how you could...
So it's all set up for teams to really keep their players.
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