Sure I’ll trade all Bidens for shipping off the entire Trump universe to prison. You can take Bidens who weren’t pardoned. I’ll throw in the Obama and Clinton admins too. IDGAF we have a country to fix.

My judicial appointees have declared me above the law and I have declared all my orders to the military are lawful and I pardon anyone who follows my agenda or bribes me which is legal because see above.

Not a functioning country.

Declare all Pete Hegseths terrorists

He got extraordinarily lucky to build around Shai the UNDERPAID superstar. He's not egoless he's underpaid because of the timing of his injuries and All NBA appearances. That's what has allowed OKC the flexibility and that's what ends over the next two seasons.

Chet has a history of injuries and J Dub might decide he wants his own team in a couple years. Shit happens. That stuff can happen to any team and those teams didn't also exist in an era where there are two aprons and the tax bands behave like this:

And Presti had over a decade from trading Harden to getting back here. If he was the GOAT GM who you could just believe will nail everything, it would not have taken that long. He's a very good GM at his high tide moment.

Jokic didn't but LeBron did. He had Wade and Bosh! Steph had an insane team and still lost and then rebuilt it twice, because the rules allowed that to happen.

OKC current roster isn't a wild outlier. If it was 2005 instead of 2025 they could get ten years. The current rules will stop it.

OKC will get a good multi-year run and with good health luck will win multiple titles. If LeBron, Steph, KD, and Jokic haven’t been able to overcome these challenges, why would you expect SGA to as they get more severe? If Presti is just that good, why has he gone to two Finals in 17 years?

They’ll contribute but they won’t be leading a title team at 23. It takes time and young players make mistakes in the playoffs. OKC are dominant because they have SGA at his peak plus Chet and crazy depth. The tax will steal their depth away more quickly than they can develop picks to replace it.

I mean, sure, is any team nails their draft picks they’ll be very good! Instead they’ll hit at a normal rate and those players will be ready to contend when they’re 27 and SGA will be 35. Up until then they’ll be able to contribute to a loaded team but the loaded team will be denuded by the tax.

New from me @zeteo.com is an exploration of just how compatible Rahmanullah Lakanwal was with American culture:

For now. They’re ahead right now. Then J Dub and Chet extensions kick in. Then SGA kicks in. Hartenstein and Cason need to get paid. Age and injury and unforeseen circumstances come into play. They’ll get a four season window from last year. There will be no 90’s Bulls or three cycles Warriors.

A 35% max and two 25% maxes just means the money doesn’t work out even with a bunch of picks. They got SGA on a deal and now will with J Dub but the math is the math.

Lotto picks get paid real salaries and if you trade them for vets they get paid real salaries too!

Eh, I think we can map this out pretty easily. Next year they start making reasonable cuts to stay out of the tax then they’re in the year after then have a second year pre-repeater. Three years then really tough decisions, assuming no earlier derailment. There are no seven year windows now.