Salary Cap, Tax Line Figures Set For 2019/20 Season

The NBA has released the numbers that teams will be working with when free agency officially starts tomorrow, tweets Shams Charania of The Athletic. The salary cap for the 2019/20 season has been set at $109,140,000 and the tax line will be $132,627,000. The minimum salary floor will be $98,226,000, 90% of the cap.

The cap and tax figures are slightly higher than the original projections of $109MM and $132MM. Some league executives were hoping the cap might be $500K more than the estimate, notes Brad Townsend of the Dallas Morning News (Twitter link).

Many other cap figures, including minimum and maximum salaries and several exceptions, are tied to the percentage of the salary cap increase. Here are some in-depth details on those numbers:

Here are a few more key cap-related figures:

  • Estimated average salary for 2019/20: $9,560,000 (Twitter link via Albert Nahmad)
  • Maximum cash a team can send, receive in trades in 2019/20: $5,617,000 (Twitter link via Nahmad)
  • Tax apron: $138,928,000

Meanwhile, the NBA has also issued updated cap projections for the next two seasons, per Eric Pincus of Basketball Insiders (Twitter link). Those projections are as follows:

  • 2020/21: $117MM cap, $142MM tax line
  • 2021/22: $125MM cap, $151MM tax line

According to cap expert Pincus (via Twitter), the Thunder ($61.6MM), Warriors ($51.5MM), Raptors ($25.2MM), Trail Blazers ($15MM), and Celtics ($3.4MM) finished the 2018/19 season as taxpayers. Those numbers are similar to the ones we heard at season’s end, with the Raptors’ figure getting a bump due to unlikely incentives that were achieved in the postseason. No teams finished the 2018/19 season below the salary floor, Pincus notes (via Twitter).

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