The NBA’s Board of Governors has formally approved an extension to the deadline to opt out of the league’s current Collective Bargaining Agreement, reports Shams Charania of The Athletic (via Twitter).
Confirming Charania’s report, the league announced today in a press release that the deadline for either the NBA or the National Basketball Players Association to opt out of the CBA is now February 8, 2023, a day before the trade deadline. That opt-out deadline had previously been this Thursday (December 15), but a report last week indicated the two sides had agreed to push it back.
The current Collective Bargaining Agreement, which went into effect in 2017, runs through the 2023/24 season. However, the league and the players’ union hold a mutual option to terminate that agreement at the end of the ’22/23 league year (June 30).
Extending the opt-out deadline gives the league and the union more time to come to terms on a new agreement that would cover the next few seasons. Reporting last week indicated that the NBA and NBPA would be willing to extend the opt-out deadline beyond February 8 if they haven’t yet finalized terms and ratified the new CBA by then.
There has been a widespread expectation that the two sides will be able to work out a new agreement without any sort of work stoppage, though the NBA has reportedly been pushing harder this time around for the implementation of an “upper spending limit,” which would function like a hard cap and replace the current luxury tax system. The players’ side has been adamantly opposed to the idea, so the two sides will have to reach some sort of compromise on that issue.