{"id":824013,"date":"2026-08-30T10:15:46","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T10:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/824013\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T10:15:46","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T10:15:46","slug":"nba-executives-believe-quest-for-competitive-balance-is-working","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/824013\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Executives Believe Quest For Competitive Balance Is Working"},"content":{"rendered":"

Three NBA executives discuss how changes in the most recent Collective Bargaining Agreement are helping to ensure competitive balance in an interview with Jeff Zillgitt of NBA.com<\/a>. NBA executive vice president and deputy general counsel Dan Rube, executive vice president and head of basketball operations James Jones and executive vice president and head of basketball strategy and growth Evan Wasch cover a lot of ground in the lengthy discussion, including how the new system has been received by the players.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m seeing a level of excitement in the player base, honestly,\u201d Jones said. \u201cThe greatest feeling you can have as a player going into a season is knowing you legitimately have a shot to win a championship. If you ask the best players as this talent pool continues to expand globally \u2013 we\u2019re bringing in the best of the world \u2013 those guys are driven by extreme success and they want to win. They want to win championships. Eight champions in eight years is a testament to how difficult it is to repeat. And I actually think for those teams that do repeat or that do make it multiple years, it should really send a signal to everyone else just how good those teams are. We\u2019ve never wanted to create a system where it was easy to win.\u201d<\/p>\n

The league achieved one of its major goals in the new CBA, which is the reduction of payroll disparity, and Rube explained that it\u2019s being created by two sources. Teams spending at the upper levels are being forced to make difficult personnel decisions to avoid the strict penalties associated with the second apron, and Rube believes teams at the bottom of the payroll scale are incentivized to spend more than they would have under the previous system. He credits changes in the CBA for creating more equality by raising the minimum team salary, increasing salary cap exceptions for signings and trades, and loosening the rules on contract extensions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe even lowered the tax rates that apply to the teams that are spending above the tax level, but below the second apron,\u201d Rube said. \u201cThose things have served as a counterbalance so the teams that aren\u2019t the highest spenders have been spending more. And so the result of that is reduced disparity. We\u2019re seeing what we were hoping to see, which is essentially more teams, players, and fans each season, as James was talking about, with realistic championship contending hopes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rube took issue with what he calls a \u201cmisconception\u201d that owners are saving money under the current arrangement. He emphasized that the revenue-sharing system hasn\u2019t changed, and the players still receive 51% of basketball-related income every season.<\/p>\n

\u201cUltimately, we and the union together spent a lot of time \u2013 hours and hours in the last CBA negotiations \u2013 talking about how to create a win-win system,\u201d he said. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t about a system that would be good for teams versus a system that would be good for players. It was about a system that collectively would be better for both and distribute opportunity more fairly and more broadly. And those are really the messages that I\u2019d want to get out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wasch talks about the challenge of putting together the schedule every summer, which he calls \u201cthe world\u2019s largest math problem.\u201d The league partners with Fastbreak, a software company, to identify potential problems and help make it as fair as possible for all 30 teams. The initial focus is on the marquee events such as opening night, Christmas Day, Martin Luther King Day, Sunday Night Basketball and others, and the remainder of the schedule is built from there.<\/p>\n

The process was extra difficult this year because LeBron James<\/a> didn\u2019t announce his free agency destination until late July.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a result of LeBron\u2019s decision, there\u2019s a bunch of different games on the schedule that become more interesting,\u201d Wasch said. \u201cFor example, when is Philadelphia going to go play at the Lakers for the so-called LeBron return game? Because, of course, we schedule road trips around those cross-country games that will implicate when Philadelphia is going to go on a West Coast road trip, which in turn has domino effects for the rest of the TV schedule and therefore the rest of the full schedule.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIt absolutely does drive the overall scheduling picture. And that was the complication while waiting for his decision, knowing what some of those foundational pieces of the schedule were going to look like. We were running different scenarios trying to plan for all the different possible outcomes. But it certainly is a disruption to the process to have a piece of information like that come that late in the process.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Three NBA executives discuss how changes in the most recent Collective Bargaining Agreement are helping to ensure competitive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818990,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,98103,54330,5820,185,6],"class_list":["post-824013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-basketball","tag-dan-rube","tag-evan-wasch","tag-james-jones","tag-lebron-james","tag-nba"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/117183940114551324","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=824013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/824013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818990"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=824013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=824013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=824013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}