NBA teams become hard-capped at the tax apron when they either acquire a player via sign-and-trade, use more than the taxpayer portion of the mid-level exception, or use the bi-annual exception. According to Eric Pincus of Bleacher Report (Twitter link), there will be a fourth way that clubs can hard-cap themselves next season — they won’t be able to spend above the first tax apron if they take back more than 110% of the salary they send out in a trade during the 2023/24 league year.
In a full story for Bleacher Report, Pincus takes a more comprehensive look at which teams will be most impacted by the increased spending restrictions that will be implemented starting next season as a result of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement.
While it’s no surprise that the Warriors and Clippers will be among the clubs most adversely impacted, Pincus also names the Hawks, Pelicans, and Heat that will have to be careful about their team salaries going forward. A Pelicans team source tells Bleacher Report that there’s “a zero percent chance” New Orleans will be able to keep its entire core intact through 2025/26, with young players like Trey Murphy, Herbert Jones, and Jose Alvarado due for raises in the coming years.
Here are more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- Appearing on NBA Countdown on ESPN prior to Game 3 of the Finals (YouTube link), commissioner Adam Silver didn’t close the door on the possibility of the league pitting a U.S. team against an international team in the All-Star Game down the road. As Silver explained, the NBA has historically shied away from that idea due to the imbalance in the two player pools, but the recent success enjoyed by international stars has put it back on the league’s radar.
- John Hollinger of The Athletic ranks the top 25 free agents of 2023 using his BORD$ formula, with Kyrie Irving, James Harden, and Fred VanVleet leading the way.
- The NBA is considering using technology to automate out-of-bounds and goaltending calls late in games and will test that technology in this July’s summer leagues, NBA president of basketball operations Byron Spruell confirmed this week (link via Tim MacMahon of ESPN.com). Spruell added that the league hopes to eventually have its referees focusing more on subjective rulings than the objective ones that could become automated.
That hard cap seems to me more complicated than it needs to be. Each to their own I guess
The hard cap isn’t complicated if you don’t pass the percentage marks in a trade. It’s forces teams to stay inside the lines which in theory would allow them to add more salary with lesser paid players that could help them fill out a roster.
The caps in all forms are designed to force player movement at the lower levels over a no more than 2 year intervals and distribute talent in a much better way to the small market teams whom were being colluded against.
The parity that’s going to come from that is great thing for the leauge.
Respect your opinion and knowledge on the subject but disagree on the parity part
Main reason – The teams that are losing have purposely chosen to lose , why are we rewarding that now ?
Smsll market has had no problem competing ( Den Mil Phx ect ) under the old system
Real world implications – Your Mil , a step away , you need That one 1 Bobby Portis to get over the hump, not any more
Your Okc in 3 years when all your dudes convert into higher salaries … some are waking out the door for free
Boston next year oh so close but bye Grant Willams we shall try without you , we too close to apron 2
Mia has little shot retaining strus and Vincent next year , guys they did everything right with
Think we needed to clean up the bottom of the pool first before going after the top. I get wanting to curtail the lacobs / ballmer from going all Steve Cohen but there were way more subtle ways to do that imo
Still think the CBA should’ve allowed drafted players by the team to have some sort of discount against the cap. OKC, HOU, MEM, etc. have some great young cores that are going to be expensive and teams are going to have to pick 2 max/near max salaries while dumping the rest.
I think the league will shake out where every team will have 2 max/near max players, 1-2 mid-range and the rest will all be on min/MLE’s.
It’ll be really interesting to see how the new CBA affects the middle class players in that 10-20M range.
Good points on draftees Alex
Gsw prolly gets a ring or 2 under this Cba but most likely your prolly not seeing a dynasty – going to be real tough ever seeing a dynasty again
Agreed on the middle class too , def interesting market , think lotta dudes get the shaft
*regarding the Mle – important to note the tpmle ( most used ) actually dropped from 7.2 to 5 in this new system, Strange
Really draconian new cba , caught me by surprise I must say
Draymond wasn’t wrong when he said the players got worked – Strange 12 months of cba , baseball notorious for the players association getting worked hammered out a good deal while the nba ( a players league ) found themself on the wrong end of the stick imo- would have never imagined. That a year ago
I hate the hard cap.
The Hawks and Pelicans aren’t large market franchises, and both could be negatively impacted by it. So what is the goal here? Are we rewarding executives that simply aren’t good at their jobs by penalizing those that are, and is that what we’re calling parity?
I’ll take it one step further: parity sucks. Regardless of if you root for them -or against them- dynasties are part of what makes sports fun. They drive fan engagement and revenue. The league is growing. Sure some poorly run teams will never make the playoffs in the next decade, but I don’t care.
The league has never had a problem with competitive balance that wasn’t self-inflicted by poor franchise management.
The NBA system is designed to stifle, not facilitate, player movement. The sole purpose of the NBA salary cap is to limit player movement (the tax has a spending restriction component to it, not the cap). It’s been reinforced with each successive CBA since 2011. The result is the most inefficient personnel system in sports history. Right now, it’s almost factored in that a star player’s preferred means of moving teams is not free agency, but to demand a trade (essentially, threaten to violate his contract). Great system.
Parity? LOL. No, the opposite, at least on the court. Parity isn’t about the absence of one or two dominant teams. It’s about top to bottom competition, consistently, where every team has a chance to win every night. The NBA is the opposite of that, it’s a tiered league, with at least one tier not even trying to win. The fact that some teams may change tiers year to year doesn’t change the fact that the league lacks parity every year. The league obviously wants it this way, or it wouldn’t reward teams for trying to lose.
Drafted players, at least if they’re high performing lottery picks, should count against the cap at a premium, not a discount. They’re cheap (below market) labor. The teams that were gifted such players should at least have the balance of the spending power adjusted to reflect it.
Big market fans crying. Parity is good
FYI the hard cap has existed for years now, they have just made the penalties higher, since the tax didn’t slow down the Clippers or Warriors in terms if spending. The Clippers smartly would sign guys to 7M-15M dollar contracts and use them as trade filler to circumvent salary matching. When the penalty was just money they didn’t care.
@App outlaw – “ Are we rewarding gms that simply aren’t good at there jobs “
Yes , but with a slight skew imo, they are good at there current jobs but those jobs are pretty easy (lose/flip cap for future assets ) you could pluck a 2 ker from here to do them adequately
In a sense these new rules are just aiding them in learning how to do something different ; win , I’m sure we will see many growing pains along the way
I like that All Star format…
Gives me a team to root for…