Collective Bargaining Agreement Rumors

NBA, NBPA Ratify New Collective Bargaining Agreement

April 26th, 2023 at 5:14pm CST by Rory Maher

The NBA Board of Governors and the National Basketball Players Association have officially ratified the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, the league announced (via Twitter).

The new CBA will take effect on July 1 and will last seven years, running through the 2029/30 season, per the NBA.

As Blake Murphy of Sportsnet.ca notes (via Twitter), while the CBA technically kicks in at the start of July, certain changes in the new agreement will be phased in over the next few years. Perhaps most notably on that front is the implementation of a second tax apron, which will penalize teams that are $17.5MM above the luxury tax threshold in the future.

There are lots of major alterations in the new CBA, which was tentatively agreed to on April 1. Our running list of the reported changes can be found right here.

NBA To Phase In Second Tax Apron

April 25th, 2023 at 11:01am CST by Arthur Hill

The second tax apron that’s included in the NBA’s new Collective Bargaining Agreement will be phased in over two seasons, sources tell John Hollinger of The Athletic.

The new financial provision is designed to discourage excessive spending by the league’s wealthiest franchises. It is set at $17.5MM above the luxury tax threshold and places severe restrictions on teams that go above that figure.

Penalties for exceeding the second apron include the loss of the mid-level exception, a ban on including cash as part of trades and the inability to accept more salary in a trade than the team sends out. A team in the second apron will also be unable to aggregate salary in trades and cannot trade its first-round pick seven years in the future (ie. its 2030 pick in 2023/24) or sign players on the buyout market.

Also, if a team exceeds the second apron and remains there in two of the four subsequent years, its frozen draft pick (the one that was initially seven years out) will get moved to the end of the first round, regardless of the team’s record in that season.

Hollinger points out that the Clippers and Warriors face the most immediate concerns about the second apron. Both teams are currently about $40MM above the luxury tax line and are locked into payrolls at the same level for next season. Hollinger notes that the only way for either team to substantially reduce its payroll over the next few years is to downgrade its roster.

He adds that the Bucks, Celtics, Mavericks, Lakers and Suns are also more than $17.5MM above the tax line this season, but they have easier paths to avoiding the second apron in the future.

There’s more on the new CBA:

Teams that exceed the first apron by going $7MM above the tax will see their taxpayer MLE reduced to $5MM with a two-year maximum for signings, Hollinger adds. Like teams above the second apron, they will also be unable to take back more salary than they send out in any deal and will be prohibited from signing most players who get bought out.
Any team that’s below the league’s salary floor on the first day of the 2024/25 season will not receive a tax distribution for that year, Bobby Marks points out in an ESPN writers’ discussion of the CBA provisions. That’s likely to encourage low-spending teams to add an additional free agent or two to make sure their payroll qualifies. Marks notes that the union also benefits from the addition of 30 more jobs with each team adding a third two-way slot, as well as growth in the non-taxpayer and room mid-level exceptions.
The number of players that teams can have under contract during the offseason and training camp will increase from 20 to 21, tweets Blake Murphy of Sportsnet.ca.

New CBA Notes: Combine, Buyout Market, All-Defense, Tournament

April 18th, 2023 at 3:54pm CST by Luke Adams

Confirming and fleshing out reporting from Eric Pincus of Bleacher Report, Jonathan Givony of ESPN says that the NBA’s new Collective Bargaining Agreement will require every draft-eligible prospect who is invited to the combine to attend and participate. If they don’t, they’ll be ineligible to be drafted that year and would be required to attend and participate in the next year’s combine in order to make themselves draft-eligible.

Exceptions will be made in certain instances, Givony writes. For instance, a player whose FIBA season is ongoing, who is injured, or who is dealing with a family matter (such as a tragedy or the birth of a child) won’t be required to attend the combine. However, they would have to complete certain combine requirements at a later date.

As Givony explains, “participating” in the combine will mean undergoing medical examinations, sharing medical history, participating in strength, agility, and performance testing, taking part in shooting drills, receiving anthropometric measurements, and conducting interviews with teams and the media.

While those aspects of the combine will be mandatory, invitees won’t be forced to compete in 5-on-5 scrimmages at the event, Givony notes. Typically, the top prospects in the draft class forgo those scrimmages — players who are graded as potential second-round picks or undrafted free agents are more inclined to take part to try to improve their stocks.

Here’s more on the new CBA:

According to Givony, the NBA and NBPA intend to agree on a methodology to rank the top 10 prospects in a draft class — the medical records for those prospects will be distributed to clubs on a more limited basis. Only teams drafting in the top 10 would get access to medical info for the projected No. 1 pick; teams in the top 15 would receive medical info for players in the 2-6 range, while teams in the top 25 would get access to info for the players in the 7-10 range.
Prospects who forgo college in favor of signing professional contracts with programs like the G League Ignite, Overtime Elite, or the NBL Next Stars will no longer automatically become draft-eligible during the calendar year when they turn 19, Givony reports. Those players now won’t become draft-eligible until they enter of their own accord or until the calendar year when they turn 22.
As part of the new CBA, teams that are above either tax apron won’t be permitted to sign “buyout” players during the season, tweets Keith Smith of Spotrac. According to Smith, a “buyout” player will be defined as anyone waived that season whose pre-waiver salary exceeded the non-taxpayer mid-level exception. If that rule had been in effect in 2022/23, the Clippers (Russell Westbrook), Suns (Terrence Ross), and Nuggets (Reggie Jackson) wouldn’t have been able to sign those players.
Like the All-NBA teams, the All-Defensive teams will become positionless in the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, reports Dan Feldman of the Dunc’d On podcast (Twitter link). As Feldman observes, that’s probably better news for forwards and centers than it is for guards.
Commissioner Adam Silver spoke a little bit on Tuesday at Sports Business Journal’s World Congress of Sports conference about the NBA’s new in-season tournament, explaining the thinking behind it and providing some new minor details. “The players will be wearing different uniforms,” Silver said, according to Mike Vorkunov and Richard Deitsch of The Athletic. “Maybe the court will look different. You’ll know that it’s not just a regular-season game.”

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Collective Bargaining Agreement

And-Ones: Pate, Ignite, Awards, Combine, Players’ MVP Pick

April 18th, 2023 at 8:47am CST by Luke Adams

Dink Pate, a 6’8″ point guard and a five-star recruit, has signed with the G League Ignite, he tells Jonathan Givony of ESPN.

Having just turned 17 in March, Pate will be the youngest known professional basketball player in U.S. history, according to Givony, who notes that the youngster won’t be draft-eligible until 2025. That means he’s committing to spending two seasons with the Ignite, like Scoot Henderson did from 2021-23.

According to Pate, he considered the possibility of committing to a college program and was leaning toward Alabama over Arkansas, but believes he’ll have a better opportunity to continue developing his game with the Ignite.

After graduating high school a year early, Pate intends to move to Las Vegas later this month and begin training at the Ignite’s practice facility with new teammates Matas Buzelis and London Johnson, per Givony. Buzelis is a candidate to be the No. 1 pick in the 2024 draft, while Johnson currently projects to be a first-rounder.

Here are a few more odds and ends from around the basketball world:

After naming Jaren Jackson Jr. the Defensive Player of the Year on Monday, the NBA will announce another major postseason award winner for each of the next three evenings (Twitter link). Newly added award Clutch Player of the Year is due up on Tuesday, followed by Coach of the Year on Wednesday and Sixth Man of the Year on Thursday.
According to Eric Pincus of Bleacher Report (Twitter links), the NBA’s new Collective Bargaining Agreement will make it mandatory for prospects who receive an invite to the draft combine to attend and do what’s required of them there (that will likely include medical testing but not scrimmages). A player who declines a combine invite without an excused absence won’t be draft-eligible until the following year, says Pincus.
The Athletic’s NBA writers polled 108 current NBA players on a series of NBA-related questions, including their MVP pick, their title prediction, and much more. Sam Amick and Josh Robbins of The Athletic have compiled the results, which include Sixers star Joel Embiid (50% of the vote) comfortably beating out Nikola Jokic (25.5%) as the players’ MVP choice; Hawks guard Trae Young getting the most votes (14.5%) for the NBA’s most overrated player; and Bucks guard Jrue Holiday earning the nod as both the best individual defender (28.7%) and most underrated player (17.5%).

More Details On New CBA

April 17th, 2023 at 8:08pm CST by Rory Maher

Several interesting details for the new Collective Bargaining Agreement between the NBA and the NBPA have emerged on Monday.

Sources tell Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link) that players on two-way contracts will have the ability to negotiate with teams to guarantee half of their salaries on the first day of the regular season. Currently, two-way players are on mostly non-guaranteed contracts worth half the minimum salary — a little over $500K for a rookie.

According to Charania, players who sign Exhibit 10 training camp deals will be getting a significant increase in bonus pay. Those players are currently eligible for a bonus worth up to $50K if they’re waived before the regular season starts and spend at least 60 days with a team’s G League affiliate — in the new CBA, that bonus is worth $75K. As Charania notes, that change will impact roughly 60% of players in the NBA G League.

Charania provides additional context (Twitter links) to a few previously reported items as well. The room mid-level exception, which is increasing in value by 30% beyond its standard rise, will now cover three years instead of two.

The contract value of the new second-round pick exception can be worth up to the equivalent of the minimum for a third-year player — that would be $1,836,090 for 2022/23, whereas a rookie minimum is worth $1,017,781. The new exception can be used to sign contracts that cover up to four years.

Finally, for players to be eligible for end-of-season awards, it was previously reported that they would have to log at least 20 minutes in at least 63 games for them to count toward the minimum of 65 games played. They would be permitted to play between 15-20 minutes in two games and still have them count toward the minimum of 65. According to Charania, there are also protections against season-ending injuries (62-game minimum instead of 65), and unspecified “bad faith circumstances.”

Here are some more CBA updates:

Starting in 2024/25, teams below the salary cap floor — currently 90% of the cap — on the first day of the regular season will not receive a tax distribution from the league’s taxpaying teams, according to ESPN’s Bobby Marks (Twitter link). This is a pretty huge change, as it is penalizing teams with excess cap room, not just taxpayers. The Spurs and Pacers would have missed out on an estimated $15.2MM tax distribution payment this season if the new rule had been in effect, Marks notes.
In the current CBA, if a player declines a player option in conjunction with a new contract extension, the first year of an extension has to at least match the declined option. For example, Bogdan Bogdanovic signed a four-year extension and the first year was required to match his declined $18MM option for 2023/24. However, sources tell ESPN’s Zach Lowe (Twitter link) that players will be able to decline their options and sign extensions starting with a first-year value below the declined option in the new CBA, giving both teams and players a little more negotiating flexibility.
In a current simultaneous trade, a taxpaying team can take back 125% of the outgoing salary, plus $100K. Starting in 2023/24, that will be reduced to 110% for teams over either the first or the second tax apron, and in ’24/25, that will be cut back to 100%, Marks tweets. As an example, the Kevin Durant trade from February would not have been permitted under the new changes.
It was previously reported that teams over the second tax apron would be unable to trade their first-round pick seven years in the future. According to Tim Bontemps and Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN (Twitter links), if those teams continue to exceed the second apron twice in the following four years, their draft pick will fall to the end of the first round. However, if the teams are under the second apron in three of the next four years, the first-round pick becomes “unfrozen” and able to be traded, sources tell Bontemps and Marks. The rule will start in ’24/25, Bontemps adds.
The new in-season tournament, which will award $500K to players on the winning team, will also include prize money for players on teams that make the quarterfinals ($50K per player on losing teams), semifinals ($100K per player on losing teams), and lose in the finals ($200K per player), report Wojnarowski and Marks (Twitter link).
Eric Pincus of Sports Business Classroom hears there will be a limit on how many players on minimum contracts can be aggregated in trades, though he doesn’t specify details (Twitter links). Pincus adds that the change will only apply to the offseason and before most free agents become trade-eligible on December 15.

And-Ones: Expansion, Luwawu-Cabarrot, NBL, Kemp

April 15th, 2023 at 11:36am CST by Luke Adams

The idea of expanding the NBA beyond its current 30 teams is a popular one that the league is widely expected to consider more seriously within the next few years. However, according to Chris Mannix of SI.com, some top team executives around the NBA are worried about the extent to which the league’s talent pool could be diluted by adding more teams. That’s a concern shared by commissioner Adam Silver.

“The dilution point doesn’t get as much attention,” Silver said. “It always fascinates me that in a league of what most people would acknowledge are the 450 best players in the world or close to it, despite enormous amount of basketball being played on a global basis, that even once you take that pool—450 players—there are only so many true difference-makers who without one or possibly two, or maybe even three of those players, you don’t have a realistic chance of winning the championship. And so the more teams you add, the more diluted, potentially, the talent will be around the league.

“… On the other hand, this is a sport that is an Olympic sport. It’s truly played on every corner of the planet. And so I think over time … you have this enormous new pool of top-notch talent that’s constantly coming into the league,” Silver continued. “So do I think the league from a competitive standpoint could absorb two more teams? Absolutely. We’re not there yet. … But overall, my biggest concern is not an impact it would have on competitive balance.”

Here are more odds and ends from around the basketball world:

Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot‘s contract with Olimpia Milano in Italy has ended, making the former NBA swingman a free agent once again, per Cesare Milanti of Eurohoops.net. Luwawu-Cabarrot has appeared in 328 regular season NBA games since 2016, including 52 with Atlanta in 2021/22. He was in camp with Phoenix last fall.
A.J. Johnson, a potential 2024 NBA lottery pick, decommitted from Texas in order to sign with the Illawara Hawks of Australia’s National Basketball League, according to Adrian Wojnarowski and Jonathan Givony of ESPN. Johnson is the highest-profile U.S. prospect since LaMelo Ball to forgo college basketball in favor of the NBL’s Next Stars program, Wojnarowski and Givony note.
Former Seattle SuperSonics star Shawn Kemp has been charged with first-degree assault related to a shooting incident in Tacoma, Washington in March. ESPN has the story.
Under the NBA’s new Collective Bargaining Agreement, the Players Association will receive 50% of team fines, tweets ESPN’s Bobby Marks. The current CBA splits player fines between the league and union, but team fines – like the $750K penalty assessed to the Mavericks this week – go only to the NBA.

New CBA Will Allow Teams To Negotiate Earlier With Own Free Agents

April 12th, 2023 at 11:11am CST by Luke Adams

The NBA’s new Collective Bargaining Agreement will tweak the rules for free agency, allowing teams to begin negotiating with their own free agents one day after the NBA Finals conclude, reports Shams Charania of The Athletic.

Under the 2017 CBA, teams technically weren’t allowed to negotiate with any free agents – including their own – until the moratorium period begins on July 1. That rule was adjusted in 2019 to move the start of the negotiating period up to June 30. Up until that point, a club couldn’t discuss a new contract with its own free-agent-to-be unless the player was still extension-eligible.

Obviously, given how many contract agreements are reported during the first few hours – or even the first few minutes – of free agency, teams haven’t strictly adhered over the years to the rules prohibiting early negotiations with players and agents.

Still, creating a rule permitting teams to begin negotiating with their own free agents before rival suitors can talk to them will theoretically give incumbent teams an added edge in those negotiations.

It’s unclear if this rule will apply this summer, since the new CBA won’t technically go into effect until the 2023/24 league year, which begins on July 1. If this change isn’t being implemented immediately, we’ll have to wait until 2024 to see what sort of effect – if any – it will have on free agency.

Presumably, teams that reach early agreements with their own free agents will still have to wait until after the July moratorium to finalize those signings, but the rule change could result in contract agreements being reported well in advance of July 1, taking some free agents off the market earlier than usual.

New Details Emerge On NBA’s In-Season Tournament Plans

April 8th, 2023 at 4:13pm CST by Alex Kirschenbaum

The NBA’s newly announced Collective Bargaining Agreement with the NBPA included several fascinating new developments for the next six or seven years of league action.

Most bold among these various changes is the addition of an in-season tournament, tentatively set to begin in 2023/24. Ben Rohrbach of Yahoo Sports unpacks some new revelations about the impending tournament.

Rohrbach writes that there will be six intra-conference pools, containing five teams each, and while he doesn’t clarify exactly how they will determined, he notes that teams won’t necessarily be separated by division.

During the season’s first six weeks, teams will play against each of the other four clubs in their respective intra-conference pools as part of the regular season schedule. Each club will play two home games and two road games in these designated group matchups.

Following these first four games, two wild-card clubs will join the six pool play victors in a single-game elimination tournament. This is all so new that the NBA is still determining how to figure out tiebreakers, Rohrbach writes. A neutral site will host the tournament’s last two rounds.

The round robin, quarterfinal, and semifinal tournament games would count toward the regular season’s results, but the final (which would represent an 83rd game for the two teams involved) wouldn’t count toward the regular season, per Rohrbach.

Every player on the tournament-winning champion is set to earn a $500K bonus for their victory. Given the rate of high-end annual salaries at present, it’s not certain that such coin would incentivize the top players on a hypothetical winner, but it would be a boon for younger players whose salaries are in the low seven figures.

And-Ones: Load Management, CBA, Chiozza, Muhammad

April 5th, 2023 at 4:00pm CST by Luke Adams

Both the NBA and the NBPA acknowledged during their recent Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations that players missing time due to load management is an issue for the league, according to Baxter Holmes of ESPN, who hears that it was a topic of much discussion during those negotiations. However, as Holmes details in an extensive Insider-only feature, neither side could come up with a silver bullet to solve the problem, which many view as “unfixable.”

As Holmes outlines, there are plenty of team officials who have advocated for a reduction of the NBA’s 82-game regular season schedule, which would perhaps be the most logical fix. Even having teams play just 72 games instead of 82 would allow the league to eliminate many of the back-to-back sets that often lead to players sitting out on either the first or second night. However, cutting back the 82-game schedule is widely viewed as a non-starter, given the lost revenue it would create.

Within his story on load management, Holmes also provides some new details on the 65-game minimum that the new CBA is implementing for players to qualify for postseason awards.

According to Holmes, players would have to log at least 20 minutes in at least 63 of those games for them to count toward the minimum. Sources tell ESPN that players would be permitted to play between 15-20 minutes in two games and still have them count toward the minimum of 65. These may be the “conditions” that Adrian Wojnarowski alluded to last weekend in his first report on the new CBA.

Here are a few more odds and ends from around the basketball world:

Veteran guard Chris Chiozza has signed with Spanish team UCAM Murcia, according to an announcement from the club. Chiozza, who has appeared in 91 total NBA games for four teams since 2019, spent most of 2022/23 with the Long Island Nets in the G League. His new contract in Spain is a rest-of-season deal.
Former NBA lottery pick Shabazz Muhammad has joined the Guangdong Southern Tigers of the Chinese Basketball Association, writes Dario Skerletic of Sportando, passing along a report from Chinese outlet CGTN Sports Scene (Twitter link). Muhammad signed a G League contract earlier this season as he attempted to make his way back to the NBA — he has since inked deals to play in Lebanon and now China.
The NBA is hoping that its G League team in Mexico City is a first step toward opening up a pathway for more Latin American players to make it to the NBA, according to Ricardo Torres of The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

And-Ones: More CBA Notes, Sportsmanship Award, A. Johnson

April 4th, 2023 at 9:36am CST by Luke Adams

One major reason the one-and-done rule for draft prospects wasn’t changed in the new Collective Bargaining Agreement was that neither the NBA nor the NBPA was particularly gung-ho about adjusting it and both sides wanted the other to give something up in exchange for scrapping it, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski said on his Woj Pod. According to Wojnarowski, one idea the league proposed during the one-and-done discussions was to tack a year onto rookie scale contracts for first-round picks.

“I think the league wanted the rookie scale to go another year so it would be another year before players could get their rookie extension or restricted free agency,” Woj said (hat tip to RealGM). “That was something that obviously they didn’t get in talks, but I think was tied a little bit to one-and-done.”

Current rookie scale contracts cover four seasons and give players the ability to sign extensions after three years, so it sounds like the NBA proposed the idea of bumping those numbers to five and four years, respectively.

Later on his podcast, Wojnarowski said that he views the new rule requiring postseason award winners to have played at least 65 games as a “ceremonial” one designed to make it look as if the NBA is doing something to reduce load management.

“I don’t know that this is going to change much behavior,” he said (hat tip to RealGM). “… I’m rolling my eyes a little bit at that one… I just don’t see this impacting star players playing in any more or less games than they would have before.”

Wojnarowski’s ESPN colleagues Bobby Marks and Tim Bontemps also questioned the rule, with Marks pointing out that teams – not players – are generally the ones dictating load management plans, while Bontemps observed that most players who suit up for fewer than 65 games are doing so because of actual injuries, not load management.

Here are more odds and ends from around the basketball world:

Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press (Twitter links) provides some more information on the investment opportunities that NBA players will have in the new CBA, clarifying that individual players won’t be able to directly invest in NBA teams — the NBPA will have the ability to passively invest in teams on behalf of all players. Individual players will have the ability to directly invest in WNBA teams, but there will be restrictions: They can’t invest in WNBA teams that an NBA owner controls a stake in, an individual player can’t own more than 4% of a franchise, and players can’t collectively control more than 8% of a franchise.
The NBA has announced six finalists – one from each division – for its 2022/23 Sportsmanship Award (Twitter link). Those players are Heat big man Bam Adebayo, Knicks guard Jalen Brunson, Cavaliers guard Darius Garland, Kings forward Harrison Barnes, Timberwolves guard Mike Conley, and Rockets big man Boban Marjanovic.
Big man Alize Johnson, who has been an NBA free agent since being waived by the Spurs in December, has new representation. He has signed with agent Bernie Lee of Thread Sports Management, according to HoopsHype (Twitter link). Johnson joined the Austin Spurs of the G League following his short stint with San Antonio, then was dealt to the Wisconsin Herd in January.