After hearing concerns from owners and fielding inquiries from top agents over the past several weeks, the NBA has opened an investigation into how free agency operated this summer, multiple league sources told ESPN.
The scope of the investigation is still being determined, but sources say it will likely focus on some of the earliest reported deals on June 30 -- the first day teams and representatives for free agents are technically allowed to speak. League officials are expected to begin scheduling interviews in the coming days as they seek to gather information, sources said. There is no timetable for its completion.
The urgency for this step grew out of the board of governors meeting earlier this month in Las Vegas, sources said. During the meeting, owners raised concerns about the flurry of deals that were completed within hours of the official start of free agency on June 30, with the belief that tampering rules may have been violated, sources said.
More than a billion dollars in contracts were agreed to in the first 24 hours of the new league year, making it likely that negotiations had begun and in numerous cases were finalized well before the official opening of free agency.
Zach Lowe and Brian Windhorst's further stories talk about how agents, players/reps, and teams all are looking at contract lengths/max deals/deadlines/etc.
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27240776/why-kawhi-leonard-power-move-was-watershed-momenthttps://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/27243621/inside-tense-nba-owners-meeting-change-free-agencyThe main problem is that part mention where tons of money/slots were already called before free agency officially started and that some agents/players/teams are playing looser with the rules than others. Not that they want to punish any teams or players but potentially just change the dates and do away with the fiction of the deadlines. They've already done this once, if you remember the moratorium used to be like three weeks instead of a few days.
In the midst of it, Rick Buchanan, the NBA's longtime general counsel, issued an evenhanded but sobering message to the room, multiple sources said.
Buchanan told the governors that as partners they were entitled to expect all teams to abide by a common set of enforceable rules for free agency -- and that the league office would come back with a proposal for a revised set of rules that would then be strictly enforced. He asked the group if they were comfortable with the league "seizing servers and cellphones," a line that stuck with many in attendance, according to sources who recounted the scene later.
Buchanan's tone was not threatening, or aggressive, sources say. He appeared to be offering guidance: This is what strict enforcement might look like.
The trigger seems to not be LeBron and Davis as much as George and Kawhi, the fact that it happened so suddenly and out of the seemingly nowhere, not even complaining about the deal itself (a few GMs think the Thunder got the best of the deal according to Lowe) just how it happened before anyone else even knew that it was an option on the table because Kawhi and George set it up themselves and then told the teams about it. And then how it immediately spread into Westbrook. After a ton of teams had already hard capped themselves and/or used up all their space. The complaint being how two superstars essentially didn't go on the market because there was no market ever made even on the level of Davis' list of teams from last year.
Like the above quote, the main thing is that they may want to get rid of some fictions like currently you don't talk deals with players, you talk to their agents at the draft combine or talk "extensions" which is all fiction like how players used to have to be injured and they changed it to the inactive list. They don't enforce these rules anyway so they're thinking about just getting rid of them.
Lowe also talks about how teams still have a fear that someone like KAT might dog it until their contract is up to force their way out. That some small market teams want to give them more ways to offer better deals to current players. Apparently on that point the league governors are completely baffled at players not taking the fifth year supermaxes that were supposed to be the counter.
