Alright, so here I am, trying to wrap my head around this wild NBA news. It’s coming at me like a runaway train, honestly. So picture this: Kevin Pritchard, the Indiana Pacers big boss, just let us in on a real downer — Tyrese Haliburton’s out for the whole 2025-26 season. Guess why? Yep, he messed up his Achilles during the NBA Finals. I mean, why don’t they just wrap these players in bubble wrap already?
And then boom, another twist: Myles Turner, their center, decided he’s done. Free agent now, doing whatever he wants. The good news? Insurance is gonna cough up about $18.2 million of Haliburton’s jaw-dropping $45.6 million paycheck for that year. Seems like a decent Band-Aid, I guess.
Now, here’s the fun part — if you can call it that! The NBA’s TTD insurance thing. Nope, not a new dance craze. It’s this policy that pays teams when stars are benched. The catch? They gotta miss 41 games in a row, straddling two seasons. Yeah, it’s as complicated as it sounds. Depending on which “tier” (seriously, it sounds like a video game) the team forks out for, they get back up to 80% of the player’s salary. Plus, there’s this fun little max payout of $492k per game… for those really crummy seasons, I guess.
Oh, remember the good old days? When they insured five players and payouts were a measly $175,000 per game. Inflation, I tell ya.
But wait, hold my popcorn — Jayson Tatum is in the same Achilles boat. Poor guy goes down in the Celtics vs. Knicks showdown. His salary’s around $54.1 million, casually ranking him fourth in the league. But Boston’s not crying too much, they’re lining up for $20 million-ish from insurance. Not too shabby, right?
And speaking of ouchies, other big names are hobbling too. Kyrie Irving and Dejounte Murray both went down hard. Irving’s ACL said adios and Murray’s Achilles did a disappearing act. Be ready for these guys to be sideline warmers for a chunk of the season.
Then there’s Damian Lillard, who’s got his own Achilles saga. He got dropped from the Bucks like a hot potato and now his $112.6 million contract is spread over five years. You gotta wonder, what kind of insurance covers something like that? Bucks aren’t spilling the beans, so your guess is as good as mine.
Oh, almost forgot, there’s this thing called the disabled player exception (DPE). It lets a team swap an injured player for another dude, keeping salaries sort of balanced. This season’s cap? $14.1 mil. But hey, every little insurance hack helps in this injury fest of a league.
So yeah, that’s the play-by-play. Sports drama at its finest, wouldn’t you say?
