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Elevate Your Everyday

1. Socially liberal, fiscally conservative

If you follow the NBA’s offseason tangentially, you’ve probably heard the term ‘apron.’ As in, this team is over/under/near the first/second apron.

You might be an idiot for other reasons, but not understanding all the apron talk is not one of them.

Essentially … Most teams are not in apron territory, but if your payroll hits or exceeds $178M, you’re in the first apron. If it hits or exceeds $188M, you’re in the second apron.

What happens when you’re in either apron: It severely constricts your team’s ability to trade for high-salary players or mortgage your future via draft picks. Here’s a full list of specific constrictions, but, basically, the goal is to make it so expensive teams can’t get better.

Now, ask yourself, are NBA owners — who fought for this specific rule in the new CBA — using it to act in good faith?

No! They are not. They are using the constricting nature of life in the aprons to justify getting under them.

You might have noticed this: The normally deep-pocketed teams are using the aprons as an excuse to shed massive payroll. 

The only owners who are YOLO’ing: Suns owner Mat Ishbia, who’s an idiot, and Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck, who blacked out, gave every Boston starter a nine-figure deal, then put his team up for sale.

2. Daily GIF: Wemby to Rudy

The teams who have to face a front court of Victor Wembanyama and Rudy Gobert in the Olympics this summer are going to have a serious case of megalophobia.

[WATCH: France vs. Turkey highlights]

3. Trivia

4. The justification is a stretch

In the frantic defense of LeBron’s nepo play, LeBron apologists have made two consistent points: (1) The NBA is run by nepotism, so who cares and (2) where was this energy for Thanasis?

The first one is just whataboutism, which is deflection. We all do it.

The second one, while also whataboutism, is particularly stupid:  

Again, if you want to think this is a cool story, that’s fine, but the justification is confusing. LeBron let a bad college player, who is also his son, skip the line so he could play with him. How you interpret that fact is up to you.

[READ: Bronny James didn’t ask for the attention, so give him a break]

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