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Sam Yip: Trey Murphy on why he decided to take on a leadership role with @TheNBPA: I had two great vets that were very instrumental in my basketball career. And they were on the executive board, CJ [McCollum] being the former president. And they were just like, you fit what we would need. For a while, I was just like, I don’t think I’m ready for that. I want to make the main thing the main thing, worry about basketball, worry about getting a good foundation. And Garrett [Temple], it was two people that were trying to nominate me, and I just felt like I was called to do it, so it was my job to answer the call. I think the thing is I’m able to talk to people. I voice my opinions very well, and I look at things very differently than a lot of players. Just mainly because I didn’t know for sure I was going to be in the NBA growing up. I’ve had every role. Like I’ve been the guy that didn’t play my rookie year. I’ve been the guy that just came off the bench. Then the guy has just been a starter, and now I’ve got to point where I’m one of the better players on the team. So I just have different perspectives on different things.
Sam Yip: Trey Murphy on why the @TheNBPA decided to open a practice facility in LA: I really think it was because we had the facility in New York and it did really well. And there’s a lot of guys that are in LA all the time. Having a couple of runs at UCLA on a small court. It doesn’t really have a three-point line—not to talk bad about UCLA at all. But having a place, that’s small, I mean, it’s just the reality of it. It’s not a regulation court. But now here we have a regulation court, we have a weight room. We have a sauna. We have cold tub. We have turf. We have everything here. We literally do not have to go anywhere else to work out, and you also have all the players here in one spot. I had one of my best workouts I’ve had, and I’ve shot it really well because I knew there’s other people watching, and it’s important to have that. It’s like iron sharpening iron.
Los Angeles will remain the place to be for NBA players during the summer moving forward. The National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) unveiled a 24/7 Performance Center for the league’s players that will be made available during the season and offseason. The NBPA stated that nearly 200 players spend part of their offseason in the area and the hub will help some of them come together during the practice and prepare for the upcoming season. The NBPA stated that nearly 200 players spend part of their offseason in the area and the hub will help some of them come together during the practice and prepare for the upcoming season.
Players such as Chet Holmgren, Chris Paul, Kyrie Irving and NBPA president Fred VanVleet all provided feedback that helped bring the renovated space together. “I’m excited to be a part of shaping the PLYRS UNTD Performance Center to meet the unique demands of the brotherhood,” said Holmgren, a forward/center for the Oklahoma City Thunder. “As professional athletes, there is so much work and preparation that goes on behind the scenes to perform at our best. Our new LA facility is equipped with the wellness, recovery, and training resources we need in the offseason and beyond.”
Michael Porter Jr. and Mo Bamba also were seen in the facility going through their offseason process. NBA players have even brought in some of their famous friends, including actor Timothée Chalamet and rapper 2 Chainz for workouts.
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The NBA investigation into whether the LA Clippers circumvented the salary cap to pay Kawhi Leonard could drag into 2027 if the parties don't agree on the findings or any proposed settlement that involves punishing the team, sources with knowledge of the case told ESPN on Wednesday. Sources close to the National Basketball Players Association with knowledge of the investigation said the union wouldn't hesitate to take the matter to arbitration if the NBA sought penalties without sufficient evidence proving the claim that the Clippers have denied since the league's probe began nearly 10 months ago.
From July 21-26, PLYRS UNTD, the commercial and consumer-facing brand of the NBPA, hosted The Sanctuary, an offseason performance retreat for NBA players in Andalucia, Spain. Since 2022, Spain has hosted NBA players for The Sanctuary to train, recover, and relax during the offseason. This year, 20 NBA players trained at “The Embassy”, a state-of-the-art facility where the players were training, working out and playing in 5 on 5 basketball games.
thenbpa: Good bumps only at the PLYRS UNTD runs in Andalulcía, Spain 🇪🇸🔥 @klaythompson @normanpowell4 @nickeilaw
Last weekend in Las Vegas, as the National Basketball Players Association debuted its new executive director, David Kelly, he and NBPA president Fred VanVleet made it clear they are not fans of the second apron or its impact. “It’s not good for fans. Not good for players. I don’t think the (general managers) love it, although they may not say it on the record. Coaches don’t love it. The only people who really seem to really love it are the owners,” Kelly said in a July 10 interview with The Athletic. “Then, I think it’s gone too far. So whether it’s an unwinding of it, or a softening of the apron, or tweaking it, we can call it whatever we will. But … I do think it’s gone too far.”
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Kelly said the NBA could still have parity without a second apron, or even one that isn’t as restrictive. He pointed out that five different teams won titles in the five years preceding the 2023 CBA. “If you look at the points in time when the game really grew, you had some dynasties and then you had some competition,” Kelly said. “New teams that that came up. It was all about competition. You did not have an artificial sort of, like, break or gate on spending. And the game grew.”
The current CBA is set to run through the end of the 2029-30 season but includes an opportunity for either side to opt out a year early. The second apron, and what it has wrought, is “not an unintended consequence,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said this week. The NBPA, however, has had a makeover since agreeing to this system during the last CBA negotiations. Kelly took over as executive director on July 1 after being appointed in February. The organization has remade itself over the last few years after layoffs and new hires, and opened a training facility in Los Angeles, where the Clippers used to practice. Andre Iguodala, who played in the NBA for 19 years, took over as interim executive director at the start of the 2023-24 season after his predecessor, Tamika Tremaglio, was abruptly removed from the job. Iguodala stayed for more than two and a half years — far longer, Iguodala said last week, than he expected.
In San Antonio, this is a lovely story of Wembanyama proving everything he has said about prioritizing winning above all else. But to the NBA Players Association, this is another example of the second apron applying pressure on star players to choose between getting paid what they’re worth and keeping their teams together. “Our position would be that the system should not require a player to carry all that burden,” incoming NBPA executive director David Kelly said at his introductory press conference Friday, just before the details of Wembanyama’s extension became public. “It should not put a player in a position where he has to carry the burden in order to keep a team together. A system that does that, we have a problem.”
Kelly and other NBPA leaders believe the system should change so Wembanyama wouldn’t have to make that choice. During a 40-minute news conference Friday, Kelly advocated for the league to start exploring ways to soften the second apron well before the Oct. 15, 2028, deadline for the NBA or its players to opt out of the current collective bargaining agreement. He supported an idea Stevens brought up in that same news conference that would allow teams to pay players a full maximum contract with supermax eligibility, but only have those deals count as 25 percent of the salary cap.