[The Athletic] In NBA free agency, cap space isn’t cool anymore

Interesting article talking about the shift in recent years of less stars being outright signed as free agents. Think a lot of that is the last CBA (and now the new one) making it a bit easier to keep you own players with things like the super max, higher raises, etc.

Think it’s a win for small market teams that normally would lose players to big markets and the players themselves are still getting paid so don’t think they care too much since they can always still leave if they don’t like their situation the team just ends up getting assets back more often now.