- 7/7/2025
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00:00I'm a little bit tired of waiting and, you know, Sacramento offered basically nothing.
00:06Here, have Dario Saric back, and we'll just take Kaminga.
00:10I mean, and all that is reportedly.
00:12I never even, you know what I mean?
00:14Like, I think it's funny that we sit out here and we read something where it's like,
00:20Sacramento offered, like, when the hell do you get to see an entire trade before it actually happens?
00:25Yeah.
00:26Well, Sacramento offered, and they've got details.
00:28I'm like, no, they didn't.
00:29Like, maybe they did.
00:31All I believe is Sacramento, they talked, and the Warriors didn't like what they had to say,
00:37and then the Kings didn't like what the Warriors said, and then that was it.
00:40And I don't even know when the hell that might have been a week ago.
00:43Might have been.
00:43They might be on the phone right now, and they might like what each other is saying.
00:46Grandy and I were both kind of poo-pooed the trade idea.
00:50Like, I mean, Sacramento, really, you're going to offer that, a guy we've never heard of,
00:55and Dario Saric, and it'll just be a sign-and-trade for Kaminga.
00:58I don't think the Warriors would do that, even if the trade was actually offered at that level.
01:03I'm with you.
01:04Like, I don't think that if other teams are seeing the slow pace of restricted free agents,
01:11and it is all of them.
01:12There's no pace.
01:13It's all of them.
01:14Right.
01:14It's not just Kaminga.
01:15It's Josh Giddey.
01:16It's Cam Thomas.
01:17And who's the other one?
01:18Is it Grimes in Philly?
01:20All four of them.
01:21There's not been a damn word about any of them.
01:23They're all sitting there, and I saw the report.
01:26This is the stuff that I love.
01:28The report over the weekend is like, Giddey is standing firm that he wants $30 million a year.
01:33This is what I'm talking about.
01:36The players themselves don't even understand the rules.
01:39There isn't anybody out there who has $30 million to spend.
01:46Period.
01:48The debt.
01:48And if you're restricted, you can't really stand firm at any level, right?
01:53No.
01:53And if you're another team, don't treat the Warriors like they're desperate.
01:57Rick, they're not desperate.
01:59Kaminga, to me, is the more desperate figure here.
02:03He's the one who's sitting here in line to get a big raise and try to firm some things up for his career.
02:10And I don't know if he's going to be able to do that.
02:13Now, obviously, he can become, and maybe has been, the situation is becoming a thorn in the side for the Warriors.
02:20They don't have all the control, but they've got most of it.
02:24And I think the Warriors, here's one thing I do believe.
02:27I do not believe they're going to make a deal because they just become fatigued.
02:32Essentially, like the rest of us are.
02:34Exactly.
02:35They're not going to make a deal just because it's like, well, gosh, boy, now it's mid-July.
02:39Ah, whatever.
02:41How about some second-round picks?
02:42They're not going to do that.
02:43And I don't think that they're going to take a deal that they don't love because they don't have to.
02:48They can have Jonathan come back and play for 7.9 on his QO, his qualifying offer,
02:54and then you can just deal with whatever happens down the road, which could even be trade him at the deadline
03:00or who knows what their other options might be and what they might want to do.
03:04But I don't think that they're just going to do a trade now so that they can, like you're saying,
03:09we're getting tired of having this be an issue and be talked about.
03:13But it still is early July, and they hold almost all of the cards for Jonathan Kaminga.
03:18Yeah.
03:18I mean, the way I look at this right now, though, because you've got all of these restricted free agents just sitting there.
03:26And so clearly to me, this is no longer about Kaminga.
03:29This is more about the situation.
03:31This is about the way this has been constructed and the way all of the NBA owners are handling it.
03:38Because it's funny when we say that, like, no one's got $30 million to spend.
03:42Well, they do.
03:43They just don't want to.
03:45And I get it because the penalties are great.
03:49They are.
03:49They're kind of over the top, especially when you're talking about a team that may want to keep its own drafted player.
03:56I know Giddy was not drafted by the Bulls.
03:58But in a lot of these other situations, you're talking about players that were drafted by this team.
04:03If they did want to keep them, damn it, I'm in favor of them being able to do that without being penalized over the top for it because of the money that they deserve.
04:15Doesn't mean you should get to overspend, but you should be able to hand out a fair contract to somebody you want to keep without getting penalized.
04:23That's my opinion.
04:23But we've arrived at a spot where this is about all of the restricted free agents.
04:28And what you're seeing is kind of the reverse, I think, of what fans have been asking for.
04:33If you look at the cycle of free agency and professional sports, there's one sport we have decided now sucks when it comes to free agency.
04:41It's baseball.
04:43And the reason is, is everyone goes, ooh, hot stove.
04:47Here come the winter meetings.
04:48And we get one player to sign.
04:53That's it.
04:54And then the Bryce Harpers and Blake Snells and all of the others of the world are waiting until February to sign.
04:59And we're like, don't gas me up and then give me nothing.
05:04Well, NFL free agency happens in five days.
05:06Yep.
05:07And then it's over.
05:08And NBA free agency used to be like that.
05:11But NBA, congrats.
05:12You're turning into baseball.
05:14Let's drag it out.
05:15Everybody loves that when it comes to their fun in life.
05:18I love that phrase.
05:19Let's drag it out.
05:21I mean, that works for about like foreplay.
05:23And that's about it.
05:24That's about it in terms of fun.
05:26Of dragging it out.
05:27Don't drag it out.
05:28This is lame.
05:29We're all sitting here.
05:30Figure it out.
05:32But they can't because nothing seems to make sense for anybody.
05:35I think that they can figure it out.
05:37But what they're figuring as we get deeper into this new collective bargaining agreement is that you don't want to spend that much money.
05:45And I think these restricted guys are in that particular spot right now where, you know, they should probably earn their worth 20, 25 million.
05:54But the teams are so afraid of going above the tax and into the various aprons and the penalties that come along with that, that it's almost like a collusion from the CBA.
06:05Like the owners are colluding with the CBA because the CBA has made it so hard for them to go out and spend that the owners are all just scared.
06:14And so it's not that they're banding together and privately whispering, like, let's not give anybody any money.
06:20But it's just so difficult to go out and do that.
06:24I think you're going to see more of these restricted free agents.
06:27They're just going to have to play on that one-year deal.
06:30Maybe.
06:30You might be right.
06:31But, I mean, we're looking at some teams.
06:33The Warriors, definitely not one of them.
06:34We're looking at some teams make what I think are almost offensive decisions.
06:38You know, what the Indiana Pacers did this offseason is potently offensive to their fans.
06:44That's absurd.
06:46To get that close to winning an NBA championship and then have one injury basically change your opinion to where you're like, well, now we're not going to go into the luxury tax.
06:57We never have in the history of ever.
06:59And we were going to this time.
07:01But now because Halliburton got injured, now we won't.
07:04And so we're going to let Miles Turner walk.
07:07And we're going to wait for a year for Halliburton to come back.
07:10And we're going to essentially take this excitement that just got built and throw a huge ice bucket challenge all over the top of it and ruin it for our whole city and start over.
07:21And, like, that's offensive if you're a Pacers fan.
07:24The weird thing is, as a Warriors fan, what I want them to do is to keep annoying us.
07:30As annoying as it is, I want them to be incredibly stubborn here.
07:34What I do not want is for them to run out of patience because there are other players they're trying to sign and then eventually take a bad deal with regard to Jonathan Kaminga just because essentially the whole thing becomes a staring contest and they finally blink.
07:52I do not want them to do that.
07:53I can't imagine that they would do that.
07:55And even if you think about the other players that they might be out there hoping to get, Al Horford's a name that we all keep saying, he's going to be a guy who's not going to be making a ton of money.
08:06So if he wanted to sign now, the Warriors could probably go out there and do that and make that happen.
08:12And if it's D'Anthony Melton, I don't know what he's going to command coming off the injury.
08:16Those are the level of players I think that the Warriors are going to be after anyway.
08:21So I don't think that they're going to blink just so they can hurry up and get Al and hurry up and get, you know, other veterans to come in.
08:28I agree with you.
08:29I mean, my read on the Al Horford thing, and I know nothing about this.
08:33I don't know that this is what's going on, but he's sitting there dragging out as well.
08:38And I wonder if that's not good news for the Warriors, because right now, all they can offer Al Horford is their $5.7 million tax team mid-level exception.
08:49Isn't this fun?
08:50Talk exceptions to me.
08:52Oh, yeah.
08:53As opposed to being able to do that in one word or two, let's make it eight.
08:57Let's make it a tax-paying mid-level exception $5.7 million.
09:02Now, if you wait and Kaminga plays on the QO, well, then that tax, now you're a non-tax-paying.
09:11And you might be able to get Horford a few more million dollars.
09:15That may well be what he's waiting for.
09:17Wasn't that fun?
09:18I loved going through that.
09:20That was great.
09:20I do think it goes up to, like, $14 million, and you can use it on two players.
09:24Yes, or three?
09:25Yeah.
09:26Or 12.
09:26It's a conversation that we've had so many different times in so many different ways, and I'm kind of with you, Mark.
09:33I've kind of lost my luster for aprons and exceptions and, you know, bird rights and all the rest of it.
09:41NBA-restricted free agency has turned into the Gore-Bush election.
09:46We've got hanging chads everywhere, and everyone has run out of energy for this.
09:51I don't care anymore.
09:52I'm not going home to turn on CNN to watch people halfway across the country stare at little pieces of paper that they're holding up to the light in the ceiling
10:02so that we can figure out if we're going to have a president or a free agent someday.
10:07We're out of gas.
10:09It took too long.
10:10We're leaving.
10:11I am excited to head to Vegas for Summer League.
10:14Well, yeah, that's, of course.
10:16And possibly see Jonathan Kamega, because he reportedly is going to be out there meeting with teams.
10:21Well, but that doesn't mean he's going to be out there like, I'd be shocked if he walked through the media.
10:27Oh, absolutely.
10:29Maybe.
10:30I mean, it's possible.
10:31The fun thing about Summer League is, you know, it's a large collection of very large individuals,
10:37and sometimes, like Kamega, you'd recognize, but sometimes you look at somebody and it's like,
10:41that guy's seven feet tall.
10:43Yeah.
10:43He must be an NBA player.
10:44I don't know who that is.
10:45I bet he's somebody.
10:46Right, exactly.
10:47I have no idea what, like, I even think this is interesting.
10:52Okay, Jonathan Kamega's meeting with teams.
10:54In order to say what?
10:55What are you all talking about?
10:57Hey, would you guys mind trading for me?
10:59Because my coach doesn't play me.
11:01Sorry, John, we don't have any money.
11:02Right.
11:03Oh, okay.
11:04Let's meet with another team.
11:06Trades are hard.
11:07Sorry, John, we don't have any money either.
11:09Let's go talk to the Nets.
11:10Yeah, John, we have money.
11:12But we probably would have offered it to you by now if we wanted to give it to you.
11:15Exactly.
11:16How does this go?
11:17Like, for real.
11:18How does this conversation go?
11:19Well, his agent probably meets with general's managers and just says,
11:24hey, you know, if you guys wouldn't mind, would you please trade for my guy?
11:27And, you know, give him $20 million.
11:30Royals will give him $20 million and you acquire him,
11:32and then we're on to Cincinnati and we get to play somewhere that we want to play.
11:36But the fact that all those restricted free agents are all still sitting there
11:40indicates to me that there's a bigger force at play.
11:44I have an update.
11:45Is it breaking?
11:46It is.
11:47Okay.
11:48From your mom?
11:49No, it's not.
11:50It's from somebody even more interesting than my mom.
11:52Okay.
11:53Though my mom is interesting.
11:54It's very interesting.
11:56Yeah, hit the fake breaking news sounder.
11:58There you go.
11:59J.P. Morosi is going to join us at 5 o'clock.
12:01All right.
12:02Yeah, J.P. Morosi at 5 o'clock today to talk about how the Giants need to trade for a starting pitcher
12:08and that everything's going to be okay with Rafi Devers.
12:11Actually, those are my points, not J.P.'s.
12:13I don't know what he's going to say.
12:14Yeah.
12:15Starting pitchers are especially hard to acquire at the deadline, but I'm with you in their need.
12:19Just watching the Verlander experience on Friday and then Hayden Birdsong who can't throw strikes
12:27and you start to look deeper down your rotation and I don't know what other options you have.
12:32Grandy, are you still patient with Verlander or are you finally getting a little uncomfortable?
12:38It's less easy to be comfortable with him when Birdsong and your other options are struggling as well,
12:45but I'm still going to give him a little bit of time to try to figure this thing out.
12:48I didn't love what he's – it's more so what he said after the game than what he did in the game.
12:56I didn't like that at all.
12:57At all.
12:58He basically admitted.
12:59He's like, I got no idea, but we're just going to start trying stuff, see what happens.
13:04Sounded to me like a guy ready to kind of hang it up.
13:08I mean, dude, if a chef said that when you got to the restaurant, would you order?
13:14I mean, what I've been doing hasn't been working, so just try some other stuff, see what happens.
13:20You know, we'll try to throw in some paprika today.
13:22I don't know.
13:23Tell you what, you let me know when you figured it out, and then we'll come back.
13:29Well, you only have a couple more days, and he's going to be out there trying to figure it out.
13:34I just – some of the comments that he made made me think, like, he's kind of at the end of the rope of his career.
13:40Like, the pitches that are normally fooling people, they're not fooling them, and, you know, I need to be better, and I've got to figure it out.
13:46It's like, you're Justin Verlander.
13:48You shouldn't be having to figure it out.
13:51Well, it's classically somebody – I mean, this is what happens to every human being ever.
13:56When your mind is still able to play at full speed and your body won't do it anymore, this is what it sounds like.
14:05He's like, I know what to do.
14:07It just kind of hasn't been happening, so now I've got to try something else.
14:11But I know what to do.
14:12I'm like, I know you know what to do.
14:13It doesn't matter if you know what to do.
14:15Exactly.
14:15You have to be able to do it, and he has not been able to – zero wins at the All-Star break.
14:22Good Lord.
14:24Anyway, more on that later.
14:26Let's go to Guru in San Jose.
14:27Hi, Guru.
14:28Thanks for calling.
14:28Willie and Debbie, what's up?
14:31Hey, guys.
14:32Thanks for taking my call.
14:33Yeah, man.
14:34Yes.
14:35I mean, so I'm going to try to explain not the aprons itself, but the reason why the aprons were created in the first place.
14:45Oh, this is fun.
14:46Okay, here we go, Guru.
14:47Let's hear it.
14:49All right.
14:49All right.
14:50So this all goes back to what the Warriors pulled off in 2016 when they got Katie.
14:58Was it 2016?
14:59Yes.
15:00July 4, 2016, the Warriors got Katie.
15:02Right?
15:02And so they were able to sign Kevin Durant because of – for the main reason why the cap increased by a lot of money because of the TV deal that was signed.
15:15Correct?
15:16Yes.
15:16So because of that, they were able to sign Katie under the cap rules, and Steph Curry at the time was making four years, $44 million.
15:29Clay Thompson was not on a max contract just yet.
15:32I think Draymond Green just got signed to his rookie extension.
15:39Anyways, they got everything under the cap, and then Steph Curry signed his big extension.
15:45Now, because he signed the big extension, the Warriors were over the cap for quite some time and were paying by far the biggest luxury tax bill in the league.
15:58Right?
15:58Yep.
15:58So now what happens is that in 2019 – yeah, 2019.
16:02In 2019, Katie leaves.
16:04Right?
16:05And so when Katie left, that salary slot was supposed to go away.
16:11But what the Warriors were able to do was keep that salary slot by trading for D'Angelo Russell.
16:17Right?
16:18And so they traded for D'Angelo Russell, and then D'Angelo Russell gets traded for Andrew Wiggins.
16:22And so effectively, they turned that salary slot that was originally for KD, they turned it into Andrew Wiggins.
16:30This CBA was particularly created to stop that movement.
16:36Why?
16:36So basically – well, why?
16:40Because A, the player – okay, so there are two parties that are involved in the CBA, as you guys know.
16:46Sure.
16:47It's the players and the owners.
16:49Right.
16:50Right?
16:51So from the owner perspective, they didn't want teams that spent over the luxury tax.
16:59A lot of owners did not want the C-boners of the world, the Joe Wiggins of the world, to be able to spend however much they wanted without any non-basketball-related –
17:10So, Guru, here's the issue, and your historical perspective and timeline of the Warriors is wonderful.
17:19You're going to get to the why, and I think I get why, which is pretty simple.
17:24I can whittle it down to this.
17:26The players would like more money, and the owners would like to spend less.
17:30And so the owners don't like it when other owners who have more money, they get to spend more, and that's called not fairsies.
17:37I now give you every other sport in America as an example of, sorry, tough bananas.
17:45Do you know what I'm looking at right now, Guru?
17:47And thank you very much for the call.
17:49I'm looking at Major League Baseball's payrolls this year.
17:52Oh, boy.
17:53I mean –
17:53Does anybody have a problem with this?
17:55Yeah.
17:56You do?
17:57Well, I do because –
17:57Is anybody changing it?
17:59No, you won't ever change it.
18:01Okay.
18:01Because it renders like eight teams powerless to actually win.
18:05But nobody's stopping anybody.
18:08Nobody has cried foul and said, we're not going to have the Mets spending $326 million while the White Sox spend $76.
18:19We're not going to do that because that's not fairsies.
18:22Everything needs to match.
18:24Why?
18:26Why?
18:26That's not how it is in sports.
18:29Well, it's not how it is in the world either.
18:30Right.
18:30Like, it's not how it is anywhere.
18:33The NFL has the cap, and so –
18:35They've got a hard cap.
18:36Right.
18:36Right.
18:36And so that is to make it fair.
18:39But even them, you know this as well as anybody.
18:42Like, if Jed York and Mark Davis walk into a room, are we all equal?
18:47Financially, probably not.
18:49I'm not even close.
18:50That's why –
18:50Hey, Dean Spanos, how are you doing?
18:52And the rules in the NFL are such that you can, you know, manipulate it.
18:56You always say cap schmap.
18:57That's right.
18:57And it is cap schmap when you can convert this to a bonus and spread it out over years,
19:02and you can have a couple of voidable years on the back end and all the rest of it.
19:07So basketball has that to an extent, but the CBA that was signed in 2023, the number one goal that the owners had was to curb spending.
19:17So the owners and the players sign off on it as well because it's collectively bargained.
19:22But if you're the owner, you're thinking we want to – we want you to put some controls in so that we can control ourselves when it comes to spending.
19:29You know, and I get it.
19:31In every league, there are players who are sort of rendered powerless, and it's usually the really young ones.
19:37Right?
19:37Or if football, it's a special teams guy.
19:40Bounce around a little bit, you get caught, no guarantees.
19:42In baseball, you have to play at the professional level for like five years before you're allowed to be a free agent.
19:49Did you know that Yaz is going to be a free agent this year for the first time in his life?
19:52And he's 35?
19:53Correct.
19:53Or something like that.
19:55Getting darn close.
19:55Exactly, because he was a late bloomer and didn't get to the bigs until his late 20s, and so he's pretty much never going to experience free agency.
20:06And who's getting hosed now in the NBA?
20:08It's restricted free agents.
20:10So you're telling me, if I'm Josh Giddey or Grimes or Jonathan Kaminga, like, yes, I haven't proven a lot, but I've proven some things.
20:20I'm proven that I'm a good young player.
20:22However, Shea Gilgis is going to walk down the street and make a million a game, and you can't get me more than $8 million for a year?
20:34Like, you can't get me $8 million for a year when Shea Gilgis is going to make a million a game.
20:41Well, they can, but they'd rather not, is the thing.
20:44Right.
20:44And they'd rather not because they don't want to get into the apron and they still want to add other players.
20:49And so it is very much, like, bad timing for these guys because the CBA, which was signed just a couple, two, three years ago, and now you're one of the first classes to come up against that line.
21:02And it's just, it's not going to change until 2030 either.
21:05Well, right.
21:05And so here's the thing.
21:07I'm fully aware that it's not like you can snap your fingers and change any of this overnight.
21:13And I don't even know if anybody's incentivized to do so.
21:15So this isn't about like, oh, they need to change this rule or that rule.
21:19I'm just here to let the NBA know you lost us.
21:24Sorry, you just ran right by everybody, and you just flew over everyone's head, and no one's following you.
21:32You know what I mean?
21:33Like, nobody wants to understand this.
21:36You are entertainment, and this is not entertaining.
21:39This is boring as all hell.
21:42Right now, waiting for this.
21:43Yeah.
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