ESPN's Bobby Marks Q&A: Suns trade options, second tax apron restrictions and Bronny James

On Monday, ESPN’s NBA salary cap expert Bobby Marks joined the PHNX Suns Podcast to answer some questions about the league’s new CBA rules and how they affect the Phoenix Suns.

From the Suns’ limited trade avenues to restrictions that come with the second tax apron to the possibility of drafting Bronny James to united him with LeBron James in the Valley, Marks answered questions that every Phoenix basketball fan should know heading into the 2024 NBA Draft and free agency.

What rules will hinder the Suns in trade negotiations? When does Phoenix’s 22nd overall pick in this year’s draft change from being a pick to a player salary that can no longer be aggregated in trades? And when do all these new rules go into effect?

Bobby Marks answered all those questions and more. If you’d prefer to watch the half-hour interview, you can do so below. Otherwise, here is the full transcription of the conversation, which has been edited for clarity.

Bobby Marks on the NBA’s new CBA

Lindsey Smith: Bobby, can you help me understand how on earth CJ McCollum and Grant Williams let these second tax apron restrictions happen in the first place?

Bobby Marks: Yeah, that’s probably a question probably a lot of people want the answer [to]. I think where the league was looking — and not speaking for the player association or for CJ or for Grant — I think the other option is you were probably looking at some type of hard cap, a real hard cap, where you really were going to basically forced to choose what players you wanted to keep on your roster. So if it was with Devin [Booker] and Kevin [Durant], then maybe you probably wouldn’t have been able to do a Bradley Beal type trade. So this is a little bit of a softer blow.

I think where this is right now, and certainly after a year of digesting it, and we’ll see with all these new restrictions are starting, it really forces you to keep your own players or prioritize keeping your own players and then eliminating what you can add from the outside.

I mean, that’s the reality as far as, you don’t really get to get-out-of-jail-free card like maybe you did a couple of years ago, to maybe make a trade where you can take back 125 percent of the salary. These new rules, you really have to like your roster. You really have to like your roster, you really have to hit on maybe some — whether it be draft picks, low-cost players, guys on minimum deals.

Boston can get away with it right now when you have [Jaylen] Brown about to start on a super-max and then [Jayson] Tatum, but eventually, you’re gonna have to pay Derrick White. So you’re gonna have to figure out there. But you have Sam Hauser, who’s on a minimum contract. So it kind of balances out, but yeah, these new rules are extremely, extremely restrictive.

I was talking to a team out in Chicago, and they said to me, ‘My owner asked me, can I still make trades? And I said to him, Yeah, I can, but now it’s like four steps, right? It’s like a four-step process. Am I triggering the apron? Am I sending out cash? Am I aggregating contracts? All these different nuances that just weren’t there beforehand. So when you put pen to paper last April, it looked good, but now I think you’re gonna start feeling a big-time squeeze here.

Saul Bookman: How come there wasn’t any — maybe some maneuvering in terms of the way the NBA cap does work, in terms of throwing in contracts, being waived and extended, extended for a longer period of time at a lower rate maybe, or maybe some type of other exceptions that you could use as a franchise like they have in other leagues?

Bobby Marks: Yeah, I mean, we had the Amnesty Clause at one time, that was in 2011 CBA. There was the Amnesty Clause, and we used it in New Jersey. We had signed Travis Outlaw the year before, and then $8 million back then was a lot of money. And we wound up using the Amnesty Clause on him, and it would basically wipe — you’d still have to pay him, but it wiped his number off. And that’s when the new CBA came in. So it kind of gave you that financial flexibility to, ‘Hey, maybe you have one bad contract on your roster to kind of shed it.’

The waive-and-stretch provision, how it is right now, it is certainly limited, right? I’m trying to give an example. Let’s say you have a player on your roster who’s got a year left. Well, the most years is three years that you can stretch it. So you’re kind of limited as far as, you’d love to stretch it over six or seven years. It’s different than the NFL, where you can restructure contracts. You can’t do that in the NBA. Basically it’s a buyout, as far as buyout, reducing the cost there.

And I mean, 90 percent of these contracts are guaranteed. That’s the other thing there is that we live in a league where most contracts are guaranteed. So as I said, whoever you sign, whoever you trade for, you better like who they are and you better hope that fits. And that’s the danger. Free agency is a crapshoot because I always call it like the honeymoon period. Like, what looks good on paper maybe doesn’t always translate there.

And I’m not saying what Phoenix was able to do. Like I liked — you can go back, everything I’ve written, I liked what they did. I really did. I liked the Durant trade, I understood like — and you guys have a better perspective — like, where they were with that roster, I think you kind of maybe had hit a limit there. The Dallas series probably exposed a lot of things, that Game 7, how it ended.

I understood the Beal trade. Probably my only argument against that, I would have loved to have him eliminate the no-trade clause as part of the deal. Like, I would have loved to have seen that, but that’s hindsight. And I understood why they did that, basically ’cause these new rules are about to start within a year.

It’s why Boston went out and got [Jrue] Holiday, why the Clippers went out and got [James] Harden, why [Damian] Lillard is in Milwaukee. You had a timeline to go out and do these deals here. And I understand where Phoenix is as far as continuity and everyone says, ‘Well, you gotta break up these three guys.’ No, you don’t. Like, this is who you are, right? This is who you are for right now, and you kind of have to see it through here.

But yeah, I get it. I wish some of the rules were like the NFL where maybe you can restructure contracts. You would love to restructure the Bradley Beal contract where you say, ‘You know what, we’re gonna reduce your $50 million number to $30 [million], and then we’re going to give you deferred compensation four years from now where, if you’re not on a roster, that $20 million will still be owed back to you.’

Bobby Marks on second tax apron restrictions and possible Suns loopholes

Flex from Jersey: We all know the Suns are over the second apron. I have a question about some of the contracts going into the summer. For instance, Eric Gordon, Drew Eubanks, they got player options. We got cap holds on Royce O’Neale. Are those player options and cap holds calculated into the second apron, and how does that work? Are they already pre-calculated, or does something have to happen for them to count towards the second apron?

Bobby Marks: Yeah, so the guys with the player options — and there’s a bunch of them, with Eubanks and Gordon and [Josh] Okogie and [Damion] Lee. That group of guys, considering that they are under contract still, those count, right? So that is determined as salary. What doesn’t count right now until that player is signed is your first-round pick. I mean, I still factor it in there just in case you do keep that, but first-round picks don’t count until they’re signed. Royce O’Neale doesn’t count, cap hold doesn’t count here. So there are mechanisms there that you do have, I guess, a little bit of flexibility.

I would recommend, if I was in Phoenix, with some of these guys who are free agents, I think Okogie and Lee are a little bit different because they were signed with non-bird rights and their number’s a little bit higher. I would tell Eric Gordon and I would tell Drew Eubanks to opt out of your contract, okay? And to go out and shop for a deal, and if you can sign a deal with another team, great. And if not, we’ll have a minimum waiting for you.

But what happens is because those guys sign these two-year deals, you’re not getting charged the two years of service number. So for example, like, Eric’s number is like at three [million] and change, his number would now be like $2.1 million. So he would still get the three, but because it’s a one-year deal now, it lowers his number from a cap hit, and it helps you at least towards the apron. And who knows, maybe there is a deal down the road where — I don’t think that’s the priority of ownership where ‘We have to save, we have to get under $6 million,’ but you never know down the road if that could help you there.

Montrezl Harrell did that in Philadelphia. He opted out last year, he tested the market, he eventually came back and instead of Philly having like a $2.8 million number, it was like at $2.1 [million], and it helped. It played a role when they were able to do the Harden trade as far as the ability to take back more money.

Gerald Bourguet: Bobby, this is one we’ve gotten a lot of questions about in terms of when the new league year starts exactly, especially as a team that’s eliminated from the playoffs. Was it at that point? Is it on July 1 when the league’s new year starts? Can you tell the people, when do the second tax apron restrictions come into play for Phoenix?

Bobby Marks: Yeah, so it started. It started the Monday after the regular season was over, the first day of the offseason here for some of these harsher restriction rules. So if you’re Phoenix and you’re in the second apron now, if you wanted to go out and make a trade right now, the inability to aggregate contracts. So if you wanted to send [Jusuf] Nurkic and [Nassir] Little out for like a $24 million guy, you can’t do that.

The inability to take back more money, it’s basically dollar for dollar. Now, you can take back contracts that are aggregated from the other team. Okay? So if you want to send out one guy and take back two, you’re allowed to do that. The inability to send out cash in a trade. So if you’re Phoenix, the night of the draft, you can’t go out and buy a pick. I mean, you do have a first-round pick.

So of course you can’t use your tax mid-level exception. You could sign buyout guys in the offseason. There’s no restriction on buyout guys. That’s only during the regular season as far as that rule comes into place as far as going about doing that.

And what’s gonna happen is how it impacts teams is, I’ll give an example — Minnesota for right now. So Minnesota finished the regular season not in the apron, right? Neither apron, they’re below the luxury tax. But come July 1, Anthony Edwards, [Jaden] McDaniels, [Mike] Conley, KAT’s [Karl-Anthony Towns] super-max, their salaries are going to balloon over the second apron. So if they made a deal when their season is over, they sent out cash in a deal, they can do that, okay? Because their salaries are not right now, it’s starting July 1.

However, it would trigger the apron rules. So they would get to July 1 and be like, ‘Wait a minute, Phoenix, you sent out $2 million. You can’t exceed this amount. You’ll have to make a trade now to reduce your numbers below that here.’

But yeah, I think the common misconception and certainly because Phoenix has three guys on max contract, like, they’re not the only one. They’re not the only one here. We put out these graphics after each team loses in the playoffs, and like, Denver, Clippers, there’s gonna potentially be a third of the league that are going to be either apron or first team.

Even teams like Memphis. People are like, ‘Memphis? How’d that happen?’ Well, when you’re picking seventh and you got a first-round pick, and when you’re Portland and you got seven and 14 and you’ve got [Deandre] Ayton and Jerami Grant and [Malcolm] Brogdon and Robert Williams and [Anfernee] Simons and all these different things, like, this stuff adds up here. So Phoenix is not the only team that’s kind of in this spot right now.

Lindsey Smith: Okay, Bobby, the real question here that everyone wants to know: Are there some loopholes that we just haven’t quite figured out yet? So for example, is there a realistic way that the Suns could maybe get under the second apron by hypothetically unloading Jusuf Nurkic’s $18.1 million contract to a team that maybe can just absorb that contract and not take something back for the Suns? And if so, would they no longer be bound by those second apron limitations? Like, are there some loopholes?

Bobby Marks: Yeah, no, that’s a terrific question. Like, yeah, so you could go out and do something like that. So we’re looking at, I don’t know, somewhere between six and seven teams that have cap space this offseason. You’ve gotta spend it. How the new rules are, you’ve gotta spend 90 percent of the salary cap by the first day of the regular season. So if you’re Philadelphia and you’ve got $60-whatever, [$65] million to spend, you’ve gotta spend $127 million up to the cap. Detroit’s another team. San Antonio, Utah, Orlando, like, there’s a list of teams out there.

So would it cost you, would you have to add something to it? I don’t know. I mean, it depends on how that team values a Nurkic. So once you go under, right? So you knock that $16, $17 million, once you’re under, then you’re under. Then you’re a team that is operating as a first-apron team or just a luxury tax team here.

KCP [Kentavious Caldwell-Pope] in Denver is an example. KCP’s got a player option for next year, Denver is considered a second-apron team. He opts out, he goes elsewhere, they go under, I think the first, maybe even the first and second apron. And then all of a sudden, all these resources that weren’t available to you, the ability to aggregate contracts, the ability to take back more money, that now becomes available to you.

Saul Bookman: So with that being said, loophole No. 2, if they were somehow to get into that first apron, can they then make a trade that would get the necessary resources back but also it puts them back into that second apron? Can they still do that kind of thing?

Bobby Marks: Yeah, I mean, basically what would happen is that as long as you’re not using one of the, I guess, resources that would trigger it. So for example, let’s say you move Nurkic and now you’re a first apron team. Okay? An now all of a sudden you wanna take back more money in a trade, then that would trigger the apron. Or aggregate [salaries], that basically would restart everything up. If you move the number and you wanted to aggregate contracts and take back players and [it] still leaves you below the second apron, then you’re allowed to do that here.

Flex from Jersey: So I have a question that we gonna stay down this road. Three-team trades. If you make a three-team trade, are you allowed to send out one player to every team and aggregate salaries that way? Because I know you can’t aggregate salaries, but in a three-team trade, can you send out multiple players to individual teams?

Bobby Marks: Yeah, so as long as the contracts are not aggregated together, right? So if you’re acquiring a $15 million player, and you need to send out two guys making seven and a half [million], and one guy’s going to Team A and one guy’s going to Team B, you’re not gonna be allowed to do that because those contracts are aggregated together to take back that money. So that — in that scenario — would not work.

Fortunately for Phoenix, you guys are getting one of the top salary cap guys in the NBA. I don’t say that just because I worked with him back in New Jersey, and he started back in 2011, but Matty Tellem who, I guess he’ll be made official probably sometime down the road when Phoenix is gonna hire, is one of the best. I mean, he is creative, three teams, like all different, besides everything else that comes with it. If there’s a way to figure out something, he’ll be able to figure it out.

And I think that’s kind of what, as far as just, like, you don’t wanna think you’re stuck, right? Like, ‘We’re stuck with this roster, this is what we have.’ Not a bad thing, but no, I think there are ways to go about doing it. It’s just gonna take more creativity than, Oklahoma City, for example, that’s maybe sitting on a lot of money and draft picks and all that.

Flex from Jersey: So sign-and-trades, the Suns are not allowed as a second apron team to receive a player in a sign-and-trade. We have Royce O’Neale, who’s got a cap hold, who’s a free agent now. I believe we’re allowed to trade Royce O’Neale in a sign-and-trade. Explain a little bit to me, and then here’s another question loaded onto that: Can we give Royce O’Neale more money to kind of find a loophole? Can we give him a — I wouldn’t say a max contract, but pay him a little bit more to try to make a deal and circumvent some of these restrictions?

Bobby Marks: Yeah, when Royce was acquired, you inherited his Bird rights. So the Bird rights, it gives you the ability to exceed the salary cap, no matter if you’re a luxury tax team or an apron team, doesn’t matter. That’s the one thing they allow you to do is basically, as I said, retain your own free agents. So if you want to pay Royce O’Neale two years, $20 million and give him a team option in the year two, basically the Bruce Brown contract that was signed in Indiana, and then flip him on Jan. 15 when his restriction is lifted, you can go out and do that.

And that’s probably — like, I wouldn’t get caught up what the luxury tax number would be right now as far as, he’ll sign a $20 million deal and we’ll say, ‘Oh, it costs them another $100 million.’ It’s really what the luxury tax is at the end of the year. It’s not with what it is right now. But yeah, I mean, that’s a way to do it because certainly, signing him and then trading him in mid-January, that’s one way to do it.

And then of course, as far as sign-and-trades, as you mentioned, sign-and-trades gotta be for a minimum of three years. First year has to be guaranteed, that’s it. Okay? So if you want to move him for, you know, he agrees to it, you do a sign-and-trade and you want to take back something else, you’re allowed to go out and do that.

Bobby Marks on trade possibilities with Suns draft picks and Bronny James

Gerald Bourguet: Well, that’s another trade avenue. Obviously, the big one for the Suns with trading things is probably attaching one of their two picks that will become trade-eligible on draft night to a player’s salary. But we’ve gotten a lot of questions about this. At what point does a draft pick like that No. 22 pick change from a pick as an asset to a rookie salary that then you cannot aggregate with another player’s salary?

Bobby Marks: Yeah, that’s a good question. So let’s fast-forward to June 26. Phoenix has a deal where they’re going to trade the 22nd pick and Nurkic, for example, to another team. So basically, they are trading the draft rights of that player who hasn’t signed a contract. So there’s no value, right? He counts as zero. He counts as zero until he signs his contract. And then when he signs his contract, you’d have to wait 30 days anyway to move that player here.

So once the draft starts, Phoenix selects, then that basically flips the calendar over. So now all of a sudden, 2031 becomes available. So now we’re looking, we’re not looking back, we’re looking forward. The seven-year rule looks forward here. So you have ’31 that you can trade, and then you can trade the draft rights to that certain player.

Gerald Bourguet: Now, we’ve gotten a lot of questions about that 2031 pick as well. Obviously, the Suns are two-for-two in terms of being a second tax apron team. How many years do you have to be in the tax apron over the next three — with those first two — for that 2032 pick to be frozen or move to the back of the first round? Can you kind of explain what that process looks like?

Bobby Marks: Yeah, so ’31 is not frozen. That’s in play because basically how the rules are right now, if Phoenix finishes the ’24-25 season, when we get to June and they do all the accounting next June, and they’d say, Phoenix is a second apron team, now all of a sudden, 2032 is frozen. So now you’re looking at it in a three-year vacuum as far as where your picks are, you know, it’s frozen.

There’s a way to get it unfrozen. If you’re out of the second apron, I believe three out of four years. I would say we make a lot to do about that pick possibly moving from 24 to 14, right? There’s a mechanism that if you’re in the tax, I think it’s four years, it would all of a sudden ship. I mean, you have to make a really concerted effort to do that. I mean, you really have to make an effort. And by then, who knows where Kevin will be, who knows where Beal will be, Devin will still be on that contract.

So I would say that your ’32 pick will probably be frozen. You can still move ’31 before that happens. I think if you’re looking at it from a trade standpoint, I think you would probably want to move ’31. Maybe, what does the 22nd pick bring you? It’s a guy on a low-cost contract. I think it’s a pretty decent draft. Hopefully you strike gold where Miami did and Golden State and some of these other teams that were able to get, three- or four-year guys.

Gerald Bourguet: And just to clarify, for that 2032 pick, if it gets frozen and then it moves to the back of the first round, it’s no longer trade-eligible, right?

Bobby Marks: Once it’s frozen, it’s off the board, yeah.

Flex from Jersey: All right, so Bobby, you just talked about the draft. I’ve been watching your draft combine work and it’s been very impressive, man. My question is, one, since you’re there and you were doing all that work, is there a draft prospect that you’ve seen in your time down there that may not be getting enough hype that you’re like, ‘Hey, this kid could be a player’? And then the second part is, what are you seeing from Bronny James?

Bobby Marks: So one of the things that I’ve done for the last six or seven years is, which I love doing it, it’s a lot of work and time, is I work with agents to help their clients interview, prepare them for their interview when they meet with teams. So on average, this year, I’ve done about 60 players in the three weeks before the combine. I started with Jayson Tatum seven years ago, I think seven years ago, and kind of just built up a network here. And it gives me some really good insight into who they are and then I can go on TV and talk about them and really share their story.

The one player — and I said this on, I think it was Wednesday, that I really enjoyed meeting with, I enjoyed watching him at UC Santa Barbara, was Ajay Mitchell, who was a three-year guy from Belgium. Defends like crazy, plays point, 6’5″, good body, really competed in the combine.

Saul Bookman: The Google machine in Phoenix just skyrocketed.

Bobby Marks: I love guys that can compete in Chicago. I know the body of work of what you’ve seen during the course of your — I think he played hurt this year too, he told me, for most of the year, but still was out there. Got better, like, that’s your three-year guy, right? That’s a guy that you draft, you could probably put him in a game right away. So I enjoyed watching him, getting to know him.

Bronny is interesting because, McDonald’s All-American coming out of Sierra Canyon. We all know about what happened last July with the cardiac arrest. Doesn’t play basketball for basically four or five months, right? Doesn’t pick up a ball. Gets put into a, I would say, somewhat chaotic situation at USC, a team that a lot of people thought were going to be better. Like, things were like chaos there, right? Off the rails. 19 minutes, what, 27 percent from 3, 30? Like, you know, five points, really nondescript.

Comes to Chicago. I went out to LA to talk with him, met with him. I love him. He was terrific. Awesome personality, engaging, got big. He’s up to 215 right now. Like, all muscle. Could play outside linebacker for you. Shot the heck out of the ball when I saw him in LA. Shot the heck out of the ball Monday night in the combine, right? So that raised everyone’s eyes, right? When you’re shooting 19-of-25 from 3, I don’t care if there’s three other guys out there. It’s still pretty impressive and his mechanics looked really good.

Now we get to Tuesday, and now we’re all expecting everything. We’re expecting his dad to show up, we’re expecting all these different things, and he struggled, right? They had him playing point, not a point guard. Doesn’t measure great, 6’1.5″ without shoes. So he’s probably what, 6’2.25″. So what is he, right? He’s a small 2-guard. He can defend like crazy, right?

So his comp, when he talked to me and when he did his media was Davion Mitchell. Which is great? I love players when I asked them, like, ‘Who do you like to watch? And who do you like to study?’ And when they say, ‘Well, I like Damian Lillard.’ ‘Do you play like Damian Lillard?’ ‘No, I just like how he shoots the ball.’ I’m like, ‘Okay. Who do you like to watch?’ And ‘Davion Mitchell.’ ‘Okay. Why?’ ‘Oh, I love how he defends.’ ‘Okay!’

So Tuesday, he struggles. Wednesday, they play him off the ball. They’ve got Mark Sears from Alabama playing point. Mark didn’t play the day before because he had a quad injury. And then they had AJ Johnson, who’s a Fresno kid who played in Australia last year. So both those guys played. So Bronny plays off the ball and plays really well. I mean, shoots 4-for-10, but in game one, all he would take was a little floater down the lane. Like, really, that was kind of like is that only thing he has? Made a step-back, hit a corner 3, was really active, good on defense.

So now it’s like, okay, he can play, right? I think he’s an NBA-level player. I think [Jonathan] Givony moved him up to like 54 on his top 100. He was like, at 98. So there’s movement there. Do I think he’s the first-round prospect? Probably not. I don’t think so. Do I think he can get drafted? I do. Is there teams in the 20s or 30s that you think, okay, remove the dad factor here, right? Like, it drives me crazy. Like, ‘Well, if we draft him, is the dad coming too?’ Let’s just worry about the player.

Do I think he can step on an NBA floor next year? Probably not, right? I think you would probably see him more in the G League. I think he’s a work in development. I think he’s an investment, two-year investment, and then you could probably see him on the floor. But that’s with most late first-round guys, second-round picks, two-way guys that you’re gonna see him with their G League team here.

So I think he helped himself competing. What he does in his individual workouts over the month will certainly help. But I would not be stunned at all when, for our sake, because we have two nights of the draft, that on day two, he gets selected somewhere here. Where? I don’t know. Would it be teams that have multiple picks and you want to take a flier, and you’ve got what you want for somebody that would help you? I could see that. Does it make sense if you’re picking 15 to take them, and you need a player? That might be a little bit more of a reach there.

Saul Bookman: So it sounds like you’re saying that LeBron James might take a nice little vet minimum just to come here. Is that what I heard? All that, that’s all I heard.

Bobby Marks: No, let me — I’m going to be actually serious in this. I like the question. I’m going to be actually be serious in this. I think it would be a disservice for teams not to make the call and ask the question. I really do. And I think there’s a multi-step process here. I think, first of all, get your scouts in a room. Usually you don’t start doing your board until the weekend before the draft starts. So we would bring our guys in Saturday, Sunday. Scouts would be doing your top, whatever, 60, top 75, and that’s how you start doing it.

I do think there’s probably a conversation you have with your scouts now and say, ‘Hey, give me a preliminary big board. Give me your top 60, top 75, and let’s see where –‘ Listen, if you get it and Bronny’s not on there, that’s a little bit of a stretch there.

But I do think there’s a conversation with the agent, Rich Paul, saying, ‘Hey, we have interest in him at — I’m just, hypothetical — we have interest in him at 22. Where do you see — what’s LeBron going to do? Like, you know our situation here. This is what we got. We got the $3 million. We have a really appealing developmental program. This is not about the dad. This is about investing long-term in him, all that stuff.’ But I do think it’s worth having the conversation. I really do. I mean, I think every team has to have the conversation. ‘Cause until you ask, you never know.