The Waive and Stretch

Works every time

I’m back. I’m back! I’ve heard some stuff happened while I was gone.

So congrats to the Thunder, condolences to the Pacers. Likewise to the Panthers and Oilers. What else? Condolences also to Grigor Dimitrov, who really looked like he was going to take down Jannik Sinner at Wimbledon. Same to Miles Mikolas, who gave up six HRs at Wrigley the other day. Didn’t love waking up to that one. Safe to say he was not an All-Star Snub, but a couple guys who took him deep were. Color me surprised as well that the Mets aren’t sending Juan Soto.

Then we’ve got congratulations due to KD on his long-awaited jump to the Rockets. Maybe he’ll be happy there! There’s a first time for everything. Congrats to the Lakers on finding a center; condolences that it’s Deandre Ayton.

And since I’m coming back from Greece, let’s also offer some tepid congrats to Giannis Antetokounmpo, whose Bucks made another in a long series of LeBron-in-Cleveland-caliber “All In” moves.

And that leads us to the pressing business of the day, which can only start with one question.

Where my Legally Blonde fans at?

Unlike the Bend and Snap, the Waive and Stretch does not enjoy a 98% success rate. But you better believe Bucks GM Jon Horst was getting up in front of ownership and walking them through the maneuver like it was. The move to waive and stretch injured guard Damian Lillard and the remaining $112M on his contract was described — I’d say rightly — as ruthless, reckless, or both.

Over the next five years, the Bucks will carry a dead cap hit of $22.5 million every year. That is just barely under the allowed limit for the stretch provision, which is 15% of the total cap. Fine print aside, the end result is that the Bucks have voluntarily given up roughly a sixth of its payroll for the next half-decade, all for a player they gave up a lot to acquire and who will never suit up for them again. Central Dame Time never quite panned out in Milwaukee, which is a shame.

The reason this move got the reception it did around the league is because it’s a pretty shocking attempt to cut their losses and try to convince Giannis that they can still surround him with a competitive roster. I’m not sure Myles Turner quite checks that box, but hey. They’re trying. You can give them that.

Lillard’s $112M was far and away the largest contract ever stretched in the history of the NBA. It’s not close. Next up was Joakim Noah, who the Knicks waived in 2018 to the tune of $37.8M. By my math, we’re in markedly different territory here.

But it might not stay that way for long. It’ll only very narrowly hold that record if the Suns go ahead and buy out the guy with the most infamous no-trade clause in the league, one Bradley Beal. He’s got two years and $110.8M left on his deal, basically the same as Lillard. (About a tenth of that would reportedly be given back in a buyout agreement, but you get the idea.) Despite not tearing his Achilles tendon, Beal plays about as much as Dame does. You’d probably want him off your team, too.

Still: what’s with this? Why are we suddenly seeing teams casting off nine-digit contracts like loose change?

Because they can. It’s sort of like a layaway plan. Back when I worked in business news, I did a bunch of reporting at the time about Gen Z’s contributions to the rise in Buy Now, Pay Later payments. Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay, whatever. A lot of these pop up in your checkout experience when you’re shopping on Zara or whatever, and a lot of people use them as a way to tell themselves: even if I can’t afford this cardigan this month, surely I can afford this cardigan when it’s split into interest-free installments over the course of the next four months. What it really is is a way to get people to spend money that they don’t have.

NBA teams are vulnerable to the same instinct. Front offices like Milwaukee’s are perfectly willing to kick the can of financial stress down the road a few years, so long as it allows them to retain a world-class talent like Giannis. I can’t exactly accuse them of being wrong, either. They appeared to have no flexibility at all, and instead found a way to sign one of the top free agents of the offseason. (And away from their most bitter rival, no less. Seriously, condolences to the Pacers.)

The issue is this. If Turner doesn’t move the needle for them, then they have even less flexibility in the years to come. This could get ugly, and the pick swaps that they handed over in the trade to get Lillard in the first place could turn out to be all the harder to swallow.

Time will tell, both in terms of the Bucks’ competitive and the ultimate impact of what has already been a costly decision to acquire and then dump one player in Dame.

And I’ll be the first to admit, I lauded the desperation move at the time. This is the sort of stuff you’re supposed to do in Milwaukee’s position. For a variety of reasons — I’ll put the torn Achilles in the top slot there — it just didn’t work out.

Again, unlike the Bend and Snap, there are no guarantees. As always, good luck reigns supreme. But at least the unlucky ones have the Waive and Stretch for another roll of the dice.

🏎️ So, one thing we did do before we left was go and see this F1 movie. Long story, but we were gifted tickets to the premiere, which seemed like an obviously fun thing to do despite it being the Monday after the wedding. And that was a lot of fun, don’t get me wrong. But I have been absolutely bewildered to discover since that people are actually liking this movie. I don’t understand! We both hated it. Formulaic in all the ways you’d expect, and maybe I just don’t adequately appreciate F1 racing, but it didn’t have much action payoff to make up for the non-story. What am I missing? Someone argue with me about this.

💰 The College Sports Commission — or, sure CSC — launched something called “NIL Go” this week, which is not a mobile and/or board game but instead a portal that will assess athletes’ NIL deals and, at least in theory, ensure they’re legitimate endorsements. It’s possible that this is a lot less necessary now that schools can just pay their players directly, so I wonder how much this will really turn up, but this had been on the NCAA and schools’ wishlist for some time. Much of that was based on the old paternal instincts that governed this world for the better part of the last century, but you can understand why people like Charlie Baker have made this kind of “consumer protection” measure a priority. It sounds benevolent while giving the schools and their new enforcers a degree of visibility that hasn’t existed to date. Best of luck, narcs.

🎾 Wimbledon is Alcaraz’s tournament to lose, but Sinner-Djokovic is a gift, and this could be the last time we ever get to see it. You gotta figure this is Novak’s best and possibly final chance at a Grand Slam, especially with Sinner looking shaky and a little hobbled through the tournament so far. My beloved Italian is pretty lucky to be here right now, IMHO. So while it’s hard to imagine anyone beating Sinner and Alcaraz in order these days, if anybody has that gear, it might be the elder statesman. He is the best to ever do it, after all.

📚 Book corner lives. One’s honeymoon is a time for downtime, and thus Laura and I read a lot on our trip. I’ll drip out some mini-reviews over the next few weeks, but I enjoyed everything I picked up, which is always nice. I’d say my favorite, narrowly, was Outline by Rachel Cusk, followed by My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante. Two trilogies that I’d never picked up, and two I now plan on finishing, both excellent in very different ways. I’m a sucker for the autofictional style of Outline, where you kind of parachute into the story without much in the way of conventional backstory at the start or payoff at the end. It doesn’t have an arc in nearly the same way that Ferrante’s work does, which is probably why I enjoyed reading them back to back so much. Both are powerful meditations on nothing less than what it means to live, which I happen to think is the novel’s superpower altogether. Doesn’t get much better than those two.

They’d both find a spot on the next edition of an All Fields reading list, but there’s still plenty of good stuff in the one I put up a few weeks ago. So if you haven’t checked that out yet, please do!