We’ve now seen, for the second straight year, a well-run, small-market team in the NBA devastated by the loss of a star player it drafted, groomed and boosted through his youth. Last year, it was Kevin Durant leaving Oklahoma City. Now, it’s Gordon Hayward leaving Utah.

But the perception that the NBA has not been able to conquer its issue with stars ditching small markets is just that: perception. The reality is much different, especially with the changes in the NBA’s free-agent system that came into effect after the 2011 lockout.

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To show just what we mean here, we offer a list of the players who have, since the ratification of the collective-bargaining agreement in 2011 (which was reconfigured with a new CBA last year), signed as free agents with a new team, one that did not hold their rights at the end of the previous season. We’ve tagged each NBA city with its market-size number, as measured by Nielsen’s TV ratings.

The chart below shows player movement among major free agents, and below that, the four things that fans so often get wrong about markets and NBA free agency, the things fans in places like Utah and OKC are still getting wrong:

Player Year Old team (market rank) New team (market rank) Tyson Chandler 2011 Dallas (5) New York (1) David West 2011 New Orleans (53) Indiana (25) Steve Nash 2012 Phoenix (12) Los Angeles (2) Dwight Howard 2013 Los Angeles (2) Houston (10) Andre Iguodala 2013 Denver (18) Bay Area (6) Tyreke Evans 2013 Sacramento (20) New Orleans (53) Paul Millsap 2013 Utah (33) Atlanta (8) LeBron James 2014 Miami (16) Cleveland (17) Chandler Parsons 2014 Houston (10) Dallas (5) LaMarcus Aldridge 2015 Portland (22) San Antonio (37) Kevin Durant 2016 Oklahoma City (45) Bay Area (6) Al Horford 2016 Atlanta (8) Boston (7) Dwyane Wade 2016 Miami (16) Chicago (3) Dwight Howard 2016 Houston (10) Atlanta (8) Harrison Barnes 2016 Bay Area (6) Dallas (5) J.J. Redick 2017 Los Angeles (2) Philadelphia (4) Gordon Hayward 2017 Utah (33) Boston (7) Paul Millsap 2017 Atlanta (8) Denver (18) Danilo Gallinari 2017 Denver (18) Los Angeles (2) George Hill 2017 Utah (33) Sacramento (20) Jeff Teague 2017 Indiana (25) Minnesota (15)

OK, now here's what is so often misunderstood about NBA free agency, especially as it relates to market size and the changes that have taken place in league rules since 2011.

1. The overwhelming majority of major free agents do not change teams.

Defining a “major” free agent is a subjective exercise, but there have been in the range of 66 such signings since the 2011 CBA went into effect. That ranges from, say, Marc Gasol re-signing with the Grizzlies in 2011, through Kevin Garnett staying with the Celtics in 2012, to point guards Mike Conley, Jrue Holiday and Kyle Lowry signing mega-deals to stay put in the last two summers.

Of those 66, just 21 (listed in the chart above) left their incumbent teams to sign elsewhere, which means more than two-thirds of major free agents stay with their teams.

2. Market size rarely has anything to do with free-agent departures.

Of the 21 departing major free agents, six actually left a bigger market to sign with a smaller market (Dwight Howard and Tyreke Evans in 2013; LeBron James in 2014; LaMarcus Aldridge in 2015; J.J. Redick and Paul Millsap in 2017). And most moves have been either from a medium market to another medium market, or from a big market to another big market.

There are only seven examples since 2011 of players leaving markets outside the top 10 in the country to join a team in the top 10: Steve Nash going from Phoenix to LA in 2012; Andre Iguodala going from Denver to Golden State in 2013; Paul Millsap going from Utah to Atlanta in 2013; Kevin Durant going from Oklahoma City to Golden State in 2016; Dwyane Wade going from Miami to Chicago in 2016; Hayward going from Utah to Boston; and Danilo Gallinari going from Denver to LA this summer).

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In most of these cases, market size did not play much of a role. The Suns had all but pushed Nash to move on when he went to the Lakers. The Nuggets were not looking to keep Iguodala, nor were the Jazz looking to lock up Millsap. The Wade-Heat-Bulls thing was the result of a quickly escalating feud between Wade and Miami, and Wade simply chose to sign with his hometown team.

The departures of Durant and Hayward stung their home bases, no doubt. But there really are no other examples, under the current/2011 CBAs, of small-market stars jilting their incumbent teams to go to a bigger market, not when the incumbent team is actively trying to keep the player.

3. This is all about the TV deal.

This is pretty obvious to those with basic knowledge of the NBA salary cap. Of the 21 major free agents who have signed elsewhere since the lockout, 11 have come in the past two years, as opposed to 10 in the previous five years.

That does not reflect a flaw in the NBA’s system — it’s a direct result of the surge in cap space teams received from the surprisingly large television deal the league was able to secure. That’s allowed cap space to crop up where it never would have cropped up before.

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Before lambasting the league for allowing this player movement, bear in mind, commissioner Adam Silver tried to head off this problem by introducing the notion of “smoothing” to the NBA’s economics. That would have spread the rise in cap space over a number of years, rather than letting it all spike last summer and this summer.

The union would not go along with smoothing — it really had no incentive to help owners protect cap space — so the idea was dropped. But if smoothing had been OK’d, Durant would not be in Golden State. He might have left OKC, but the Warriors would not have had the space to sign him. The Celtics still might have lured away Hayward, but they would have had to give up more players to create the space to get the deal done.

4. The jump in player movement will end, and end quickly.

Reality will click back into the NBA next season, when the spending of the last two years will harden on the payroll sheets and teams will be looking at rosters that are locked into over-the-cap totals for the foreseeable future. There will be transactions to come, of course, but as things stand, only about 10 teams are projected to be under the salary cap next season.

A handful of teams (the Blazers, Cavaliers, Warriors and Raptors, plus the Wizards when they match Otto Porter’s contract) will plow through the rest of the summer already worrying about next year’s luxury tax bill, and others figure to join that list.

That means we could see the return to prominence of some old NBA staples that have slid from view recently — the importance of the mid-level exception, for example, which once dominated the aspirations of above-average players, and the cap-space trade, in which expiring contracts were heavily coveted for the immediate relief they could provide.

Those are throwbacks to a more restrictive time in NBA salary-cap history, and league rules that came with the last two collective bargaining agreements were actually supposed to make things even more restrictive than before. The luxury tax is tougher, there is not the same payroll advantage to sign-and-trades and there are more incentives for big-time stars to stay with their teams.

Those system advances were obscured by the drunken-sailor spending that the league saw over the past two years. There may be a perception that star players have taken advantage of that to slip away to bigger markets, but a closer look shows that reality is much different. The perception and reality will realign themselves, starting next year.