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Wow, what a week it was in terms of NBA news content right before training camp. With Golden State Warriors Media Day set to start at 10:30AM PDT on Monday, looks like the pipeline is ready to feed the firehose. More on Media Day later on this site, but let’s recap how things went down on our private Discord server (free for $5/mo or $50/yr subscribers to this Substack) Wednesday, September 22, just five days before training camp.
Less big-name free agent movement
Bobby Marks of ESPN started off giving us a little nugget on another reason how Kevin Durant [my latest on KD here] joined the Warriors back in 2016: the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) only allowed for the OKC Thunder to extend KD for two years at just $44.9 million. Under current CBA rules, OKC would’ve been able to offer him four years at $139 million or five years at $178 million. So, this time, the Warriors lucked out. But I look at it as karma because the CBA was changed (at least) twice in the past due to the loopholes that left the Dubs holding the empty bag: Chris Webber and Gilbert Arenas.
The article also mentioned Ben Simmons becoming a free agent in 2025, a year after the cap should increase, which might allow for more free agent movement, which the NBA hasn’t seen much of since KD went to the Brooklyn Nets and Kawhi Leonard and Paul George landed on the LA Clippers.
So with the more franchise-friendly extensions they can give, all the agents and players in the NBA are currently trending more towards “sign now and ask (for an) out later.”
Bob x Showtime
Bob Myers went on Instagram Live for Aaron “Showtime” Taylor, whom we’ve had on our YouTube Live [can’t find the link as YouTube can’t search on our old livestreams]:
My favorite part was when Myers told the story of having season tickets in the nosebleeds, then getting a Cohan-era Warriors sweatshirt somehow from Antawn Jamison and wearing that while Myers attended UCLA. Someone asked him, “Who are the Golden State Warriors? I don’t even know where that is,” and suggested he could switch to being a Los Angeles Lakers fan, no problem.
But Bob didn’t bite, he remained loyal to the Warriors. I did a quick Google search and found that there was a time in the past when he was offered up as a name to replace Magic Johnson as the GM of the Lakers, a position that eventually went to Rob Pelinka.
Had we known the sweatshirt story back then, the rumor would’ve never made the light of day, or at least more people would’ve known that was impossible.
DubNation can now take comfort that Myers, indeed, bleeds blue and gold, i.e., “he’s a Warriors”. Sure, it’s not a tattoo or anything — one of my first-ever tweets from #GSWMediaDay was an observation of Monta Ellis, who is famous for saying, “I’m a Warriors”:
<div class="tweet" data-attrs="{"url":"https://twitter.com/poormanscommish/status/25714855739?s=21","full_text":"I'm confused. Monta Ellis says he didn't get any new tattoos but when I mentioned @warriors logo he said “Yeah I got that.””,”username”:”poormanscommish”,”name”:”Poor Man’s Commish”,”date”:”Mon Sep 27 19:35:27 +0000 2010″,”photos”:[],”quoted_tweet”:{},”retweet_count”:3,”like_count”:1,”expanded_url”:{},”video_url”:null}”>
I’m confused. Monta Ellis says he didn’t get any new tattoos but when I mentioned @warriors logo he said “Yeah I got that.”