LAS VEGAS -- National Basketball Players Association executive director David Kelly criticized the NBA's salary cap and luxury tax system on Friday, arguing that the newly implemented "second apron" must be "softened" or removed.

"We are not fans of the second apron," Kelly said. "We did not propose the second apron. We should have done a better job of fighting back against the second apron. In the future, we will have a much more unified union, and we will do a better job of fighting back. ... We're seeing [the apron system] decimate teams and force decisions to be made that are not basketball decisions." [a reference to the Jaylen Brown trade]

July 10, 2026 ESPN

Chuck Cooperstein, Las Vegas Mavericks play-by-play guy, July 3, 2026, replying to Kyle Kuzma:

Has anyone ever asked why Tamika Tremaglio, who negotiated this deal as the executive director of @TheNBPA stepped down immediately afterward. No sports union head ever leaves after negotiating only one such deal.

Kyle Kuzma, Milwaukee Male Deer, July 3, 2026:

 ...the @TheNBPA has to operate with elite business acumen, elite negotiating strategy, and real foresight.

The owners and the league walk into these meetings with killers that continue to run circles around us time and time again with elite lawyers, economists, cap experts, media strategists, and long term business operators. Players deserve a PA that is just as sharp, just as prepared, and just as aggressive about protecting our upside.

Too often, it feels like players are informed after the fact instead of being truly educated and empowered before decisions are made. That cannot continue.

The next CBA [2030] is a do or die moment for us as players. It's only going to get worse for us. We need transparency, accountability, and a serious re evaluation of who is representing us and how they are representing us.

Almost invariably I side with the working man in labor disputes, even when the working man is making $50M per. I side with them here. The current CBA went into effect on July 1, 2023. It is a disaster for players and team managers. It killed free agency. The second apron essentially is a hard cap. The CBA was a complex tome that confused even experienced team experts (e.g. Andy Elisburg leading to Terry Rozier trade), and as David Kelly refers, it's effects are retrospective. Players who signed contracts before or around the CBA's effective date, i.e. before the full implications of "aprons", etc. were understood, are almost untradeable, their contracts essentially void. (Jaylen Brown's contract was signed July 26, 2023. Brad Stevens has less of an excuse for Jayson Tatum's contract, July 1, 2024.)

How in hell did this come about? The undersigned had an ominous sense that the NBPA was going to get rolled when Michelle Roberts stepped down after seven years as executive director of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) in 2021. At that time NBA Commissioner Adam Silver was obsessed with the new CBA. The NBA's future was held up until the new CBA was reached. Adam is a brilliant man and was at this time an experienced Commissioner. The CBA was his top priority of and he was laser-focused on it. Adam also represents the team owners. He has all of the elite legal talent and experts that Kyle Kuzma mentions at his disposal. Sitting across from Adam and his go-gos was Tamika Tremaglio, who succeeded Roberts in 2021 and stepped into the negotiations with no experience, and as I sensed, she, the union, and the players got rolled. Tremaglio negotiated the CBA that went into effect July 1, 2023 and stepped down half-way through her four-year term "in a surprise move" in November, 2023. The CBA was controversial from the start. The undersigned has no doubt, but also no facts specifically, that, as David Kelly gestures to, Tremaglio was encouraged by the players "to seek other opportunities". Her legacy are aprons, first and second, the latter of which effectively is a hard cap, the decimation of free agency, and "optionality". 

Sportico, Dec. 30, 2024:

Tamika Tremaglio departed as executive director of the National Basketball Players Association in a surprise move in early November 2023. She still made more than any other union employee in 2024.

...

Tremaglio took over as head of the NBPA in January 2022 and made $1.71 million during her first nine months on the job. She earned $3.1 million during her lone full fiscal year with the NBPA, as the union and league negotiated a new seven-year collective bargaining agreement that was ratified in April 2023. She left the PA to “pursue other opportunities,” according to a statement when she departed.

Here We Go (Again)!

Windy: LBJ Has "Done Deal" with team other than Cleveland

“I’m hearing stuff in another cities too. I’m not gonna say who, but I had somebody on the phone with me today that I consider a good source who was swearing it’s a done deal in another city a couple hours ago,” Windhorst reported during an appearance on ESPN Cleveland. “I am being very, very cautious. Right now it’s too scattered. I also know how LeBron has operated, they’ve kept their circle very tight.

“I’m hearing rumors all day long. And all of them make some level of sense, and all of them make some level of nonsense. I’m just telling you, Cleveland is not the only place where there are rumors.”

Google AI

Following reports that LeBron James will leave the Los Angeles Lakers, the Miami Heat have surged to the top of next team prediction markets. The Cleveland Cavaliers closely follow as top suitors. [1, 2]

yellow by Googs, black by unsigned. THAT IS NOT SO: THERE IS NO SURGE TO THE TOP OF THE TWO MOST-CITED PREDICTION MARKETS, POLYMARKET AND KALSHI:

Polymarket at 12:31 am: Cleveland 37.6% Miami 26.4%

Kalshi at 12:32 am: Cleveland 40% Miami 28%

Brady Hawk
@BradyHawk305

If you told me a month ago Giannis Antetokounmpo would be on the Miami Heat, they have a real shot at LeBron James, and Bam Adebayo punched Tyler Herro….. 

I’d tell you to seek help

9:57 PM · Jul 10, 202659.9KViews

 

Public Occurrences July 10, 2026

Ukraine Boxing Ears of Russian Bear Around Occupied Crimea

At least 36 ships, 32 of them oil tankers have been sent to the bottom of the Sea of Azmov in the last 48 hours, in response to which...

Zelensky: “I think you heard such voices in Russian media: 'What if we respond to Ukrainian strikes with nuclear weapons?'

"China ... directly responded in an ultimatum-like form — that there can be no thought whatsoever of using nuclear weapons.” 

Zelensky said that NATO leaders told him this. 

Now, at first blush, you think "this is a good thing", right? China talking down Putin to prevent nuclear war in Europe. That's good. But think, how would this have come up? 

Did Xi just call up Putin out of the blue and say "Vladimir, there can be no thought whatsoever of using nuclear weapons"? 

Was Xi watching 🦊 when some Commie commentator recommended Nukraine? 

Was he watching C-Spanski when a Rooski MP made the recommendation?

It seems more likely to one idiot blogger that Putin would have run this one up the flag pole with his minders in Beijing. That was what Poot-Poot's predecessors did with us when said Soviet predecessors wanted to nuke "those yellow bastards" in 1969. "'Murican frenemies, what you think we nuke China? Goot, nyet?" "NYET NYET NYET YOU CRAZY ROOSKIS!", we responded. 

It seems to me the "thought" was first in Putin's mind, not in Xi's. That not so goot.

It's Friday night...

 

Heat in Vegas

Bam Adebayo slapped Tyler Herro upside the head today. Tyler had direct-messaged someone questioning Bam's defensive ability and nightly effort and wondered if he was worth his three-year, $166M contract.

So yeah, that happened. No. 1 story in sports on Espo.

Public Occurrences July 9, 2026

The Fight Over Hormuz Boils Down to One Poorly Worded Clause in Trump’s Deal

Paragraph 5 hands Iran a leading role in opening the waterway, but one the U.S. and its allies aren’t comfortable with Pause: Well U.S. "and allies" (who are American allies? We have none.) you fucking signed on to uncomfortable. Unpause.

President Trump’s memorandum of understanding with Iran was supposed to open the Strait of Hormuz and relieve the pressure on the global economy. Instead, it set off a test of wills that has exploded into violence twice in the past two weeks.

The root of the dispute is Paragraph 5,...

 Pause: The full text of Paragraph 5 is at note at below.  The money shot for purposes here is:

Upon the signing of this MOU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements, using its best efforts, for the safe passage of commercial vessels, with no charge for 60 days only...Not Iran and Oman, not Iran and any other nation. Iran and Iran alone. Unpause

....which says Iran will make arrangements to restore shipping through the strategic waterway and then work with Oman to determine how to administer it in the future. But it also includes an Iranian [And an Iran ALONE] pledge to secure safe passage and remove military obstacles such as mines...

That too is from Wally but you could have read about it here from nytimes on June 28.

note: Paragraph 5

Upon the signing of this MOU, the Islamic Republic of Iran will make arrangements, using its best efforts, for the safe passage of commercial vessels, with no charge for 60 days only, from the Persian Gulf to the Sea of Oman and vice versa. The traffic of commercial vessels will immediately start, and considering the needs for removing the technical and military obstacles, and demining by the Islamic Republic of Iran, will be instated within 30 days. The Islamic Republic of Iran will conduct dialogue with the Sultanate of Oman to define the future administration and maritime services in the Strait of Hormuz in discussion with other Persian Gulf littoral states in line with the applicable international law and the sovereign rights of coastal states of the Strait of Hormuz.

MILLY

Iran Hatched Fresh Plot to Kill Trump, Israel Told U.S.

Israel recently shared new intelligence with the U.S. that they said showed Iran was considering a new plan to assassinate the president, sources say

Wally first, all others now

BUT...

Other American officials suggested the Israeli report could be an effort to sway Trump's decision-making as he weighs whether to intensify American military action against Iran.

...

...the US had not vetted it [the Israeli tip] themselves. 

...

...But [one U.S.] source said that the Israeli report is viewed — in part — as piece of a broader Israeli effort to influence Trump's decision making on Iran. Some in the intelligence community are always skeptical of Israeli reporting, the source said.

Noodles via Yahoo

"Optionality", "Practice"😂

The theme was "optionality." This was a word Stevens used many times when responding to questions about this trade.

The trade, says Stevens, is maybe less about straightforwardly fortifying the team for an immediate title push than it is about what ESPN's Ohm Youngmisuk described as "optionality," an awful enough word in any context but particularly gruesome as cold corporate jargon.

😂

If you tuned in to the press conference, you heard two buzzwords from President of Basketball Operations Brad Stevens and majority owner Bill Chisolm: “optionality” and “basketball reasons.”

...

No, it wasn’t about switchability on defense or being able to play different kinds of Mazzulla Ball. We’re talking about optionality [see video at bottom😂]when it comes to team-building, specifically on the cap sheet.

There were plenty of other takeaways from Stevens and Chisholm’s press conference, but Stevens’ “optionality” explanation was chief among them.

Brad Stevens says ‘optionality,’ cost of stars against salary cap motivations for Jaylen Brown trade

Stevens, the Boston Celtics’ president of basketball operations, pulled the trigger on a Brown-to-Philadelphia-for-Paul George trade (https://www.nbcsports.com/nba/news/winners-losers-from-jaylen-brown-to-76ers-for-paul-george-trade) that has been lambasted around the league and vilified in Boston. He took to the podium, sitting next to team owner Bill Chisholm, and explained his reasoning largely as “optionality.”

And now, Celtics fans, stand up, put your hands together and cheer wildly for … optionality!

Brad Stevens, president of basketball operations for the Celtics, used that word so many times Monday that it kept reminding me of that time former Philadelphia 76ers guard Allen Iverson kept talking about “practice.”😂

Steve Buckley gets the Pulitzer for connecting Stevens' mind-numbing, brain-dead, tone-deaf, career-shortening (?) overuse of "optionality" with "practice" from twenty-four years ago!

🤣🤣👏

My goodness, there are some people who can really WRITE, even in sports.

All this on the Brad Stevens, Bill Chisholm presser "explaining" why Stevens traded Jaylen Brown. Spoiler: still no (good) answers.

Steve Buckley, The Athletic

Justin Tinsley, Andscape

Chris Thompson, Defector

There's a hashtag and everything for that, huh?

 

This is Still a Dream to Me

Beer GM Jon Horst:

“No one’s sitting here today and saying that we’re a better team today after trading Giannis,” he said, according to The Athletic’s Eric Nehm. “He’s one of the greatest players to ever play, (the) greatest player in the franchise history. We’ve had an incredible amount of success. And as I’ve said to Miami a couple of times, he’s going to have an unbelievable season for them. [They’ve] got an incredibly motivated, healthy, focused Giannis Antetokounmpo that I think is going to have an unbelievable season and seasons, for that matter.

Heat Central

@TheHeatCentral

And I may be on my deathbed and having senile dementia this is so much. Maybe Putin or Trump or the Netanyahoo spiked my diet pepsi but it's too much for my brain to handle. 

Windy, who has followed LBJ everywhere from Akron high school to Cleveland to Miami,

back to Cleveland, and to La-La, who knows him and how he thinks STILL,12 yrs after "going home", sees and hears the Miami "Heat" in LBJ.

Brian Windhorst believes Miami and Cleveland are in their own category for LeBron’s next team:

“One other thing I think is going to come down here that LeBron will have to decide is how much he cares about what people will think if he goes to a team he’s never played for before. Basically if he chooses somebody besides CLE or MIA. CLE or MIA, it’s a very clean decision. It makes sense. Both of them have cases. Does he want to deal with in his life what the reaction will be if he went to Philadelphia, MIN, DEN? Also deal with people calling him a ring chaser. I think that’s an extra layer.

I think CLE and MIA are in their own category. To this day he repeats Miami Heat Mantras. When I watch him play and hear him talk, you feel the Miami Heat part of his basketball DNA.”

Heat Central

@TheHeatCentral

“I think Giannis is clearly hopeful that LeBron will come and I think that was a good sign… If you’re LeBron you think it’s cool that Giannis is so wrapped up in what you might do and certainly the Heat are still absolutely on the board.”

— @WindhorstESPN on LeBron to Miami rumors

(Via @YahooSports)

For all the world to see, this is who the Ukrainian people are

Every day for 1,595 days (and counting), at exactly 9:00 am, Ukriane comes to a stop. For one minute, Ukrainians, whatever they are doing, stop in place for a moment of silence. Every day since February 24, 2022.

June 27:

This Deserves to Stand Alone

Russo-Ukraine War Casualties, Wikipedia from The Independent:

In July 2026, Oxford historian Peter Frankopan cited an estimate by Russian military bloggers that Russian soldiers in some areas of the frontline have a life expectancy of 20-35 minutes amidst evolving Ukrainian drone capabilities.[143]

Public Occurrences July 8, 2026

Putin on Precipice: Ukraine Pounds Rus in Crimea--38 Targets, Kerch Bridge, Shoots Down Su-35 Fighter; Trump Allows Ukraine to Assemble Patriot Missiles

All smiles. He has the cards.

Institute for the Study of War:

Rooski brain no goot, forget umbrella.

                                                        Rooski also corrupt swine.

7:43 am:

ADHD-Afflicted Florida Felon, Eyes on Greenland, Declares Iran Leaders "Sick", Peace "Over", a "Waste of Time", Endangers Nobel Pursuit

1:02 am:

At NATO Meeting in Ankara, Turkey Florida Felon AGAIN Demands Greenland for Toilet Nation from NATO Ally Denmark

CONSIDERED IN ISOLATION...

...I LOVE MY LIFE!

Hole-and-corner

I love words. I love the English language. I used to just randomly open the dictionary. Today, for reasons I don't even remember, I checked Merriam-Webster's thesaurus for secret. This was one of the synonyms:

hole-and-corner

as in clandestine

undertaken or done so as to escape being observed or known by others

They give a recent example of its usage:

"a hole-and-corner antiterrorist operation whose very existence has been steadfastly denied by the government"

I had NEVER fucking heard of hole-and-corner. M-W doesn't give the etymology, noting only that it came into existence in 1833. I assume like hiding in a hole and behind a corner, clandestine-like.

And then of course there is the possibility (?) probability (?) that it owes its existence to the cornhole, "anus (in the context of anal sex)". A hole-and-corner cornholer? Yeah, that's just coincidence.🙄

Would that another Jewish leader whose nation was brutally attacked, had the same soul as that great man

 

Public Occurrences July 7, 2026

Another Iran War for Trump to Win Nobel Peace Prize :)

"Ceasefire" tit by Iran: Attack Strait of Hormuz shipping.

"Ceasefire" tat by Toilet Nation: Air strikes on Iran.

                                                  : Reimposition of sanctions on Iranian oil.

U.S.-Belgium most-watched soccer game in American history

It may be the last-watched, too: 1-4, two Keystone Cops blunders, unenthusiastic play. Another Toilet Nation humiliation on the world stage.

In other short pants football news, Argentina continued its march to the MENA Cup with a come-from-behind 3-2 victory over Egypt.

America at 250: We Had a Good Run

It’s not a celebration. It’s a vigil.

Jonathan V. Last

It was if he found my letters and read each one aloud. Yesterday evening I sent Mr. Last an email:

Oh my goodness.

Everything that I have written, everything that I have thought, the advent of "America 2.0", RIP Original America. 

Reading those words in somebody else's voice is crushing. But thank you.

"More eager to fight. To struggle is to live"

The triumph of liberalism is not inevitable. It can fail. And then, if we are bold, unrelenting, and lucky, it can be won back.

Maybe this knowledge—stripping America bare of her pieties—can make us less fatalistic and more eager to fight.

Because to struggle is to live.

Another text to same friend:

there's a theory about america, i'm not saying it's the consensus but it has been out there for some time, that this very peculiar nation needs a great bloodletting at times before it jerks itself into the next iteration, like the civil war, 80 yrs after founding. we're overdue by this theory, unless we count the '60's, and maybe we should. real violence, a quasi-civil war. god bless me, if it happens soon i'm already in my '70's, i won't be of much use, but i'll do my part if it comes to that. i don't even own a gun but i goddamn will if, as lincoln said in his second inaugural, "and the war came." it's just a theory but it feels a little like a great fit of violent vomiting may, i don't say will, come. i just don't think anyone much thinks we can go on like this indefinitely. the stress has already fractured institutions and norms. will it break people out of "comfortable numbness", or haven't we that much "virtue", and that much "fight" left? maybe we're gonna find out, idk.

"The America we knew and loved has passed"

So what happens next? At some point the vigil will end and we will make peace with the reality that the America we knew and loved has passed.

But we’ll still be here. A placed called America will still be here. Life will go on.

What are we supposed to do?

The same thing we do when any loved one passes. We live.

"Illiberalism born of tranquility and wealth"

...our lurch toward illiberalism is not the result of hardship or privation—it is the product of success. Americans did not turn to a corrupt strongman because they were suffering through a Great Depression or a World War. Illiberalism was not undertaken out of desperation.

...

Instead, this age is marked by something unseen in the history of our once-great nation: A surge toward illiberalism born of tranquility and wealth.

Liberalism

America is not more unjust or illiberal today than it was in 1800; or 1850; or 1950. But we have moved decidedly backwards: We are a great deal more illiberal in 2026 than we were in 2000, or 2008, or 2016.

We were founded in genocide (1) and then our new nation institutionalized slavery. We didn’t do (much) colonialism, but we did practice a brutal mercantilism. Even after the Civil War, we allowed authoritarianism to persist in half the country. Our hands have never been entirely clean.

My own formulation in a text to a friend last night: 

You live in a fucking country that was acquitted by reason of insanity on a charge of matricide, that was erected on the backs of imported African slaves, that was reared on violence, nourished on (Jim) Crow and the "strange fruit" of lynchings. You think today's cruelty is "unamerican"???

(1) Genocide of Native Americans is a controversial topic among scholars. I disagree that the English settlers of North America committed genocide.

America 2.0

If you think it’s always “too soon to tell” then you don’t believe that America always has enough virtue for liberalism to prevail.

...

My own suspicion is that the hour is late. Liberalism in America as it was even ten years ago is gone. "The republic” still exists. It just isn’t the same thing we once loved.

"Has the republic been saved?" "There is only life": McDonald's, sports, work, struggle

Has the republic been saved? ...

From this vantage point, no outcome is ever determinative. You can’t say, “Well, there wasn’t enough virtue to save America in 2016. Or 2024.” Because the story never ends and there is no “emergency.” There is only life; there is only struggle. Which rolls in endlessly, like the tides.

Form vs Substance

A nation called “The United States of America” would still exist. It would still have books full of laws, and McDonald’s, and the Postal Service. Just as a for-instance: If Donald Trump’s attempted coup had worked in 2021, “America” as a place, a thing, would have persisted, even if the liberal republic as we had known it was gone.

Virtue

My best friend is fond of quoting William Seward’s line about America:

“There was always just enough virtue in this republic to save it; sometimes none to spare, but still enough to meet the emergency.”

Virtue goes all the way back. Before the Civil War, all the way back before the Declaration of Independence. It goes back to the pre-Revolutionary literature. A belief that Americans had superior virtue is what animated the Revolution.

That’s a nice sentiment, but I don’t think it’s right. For one thing: How would we know if the republic hasn’t been saved?

A good run spoiled

But beneath the surface a cancer was growing. And here, on the eve of our nation’s birthday, the America we knew is in hospice. After the cancer of illiberalism first presented itself, we chose a difficult course of treatment and beat it back for a few years. But then it returned, stronger and more aggressive. The illiberalism metastasized.

July 4, 2026 is not the celebration of a vital and prospering liberal society. It is a deathbed vigil.