The NBA has updated its salary cap projection for the 2023/24 season, telling teams today that the cap is expected to be higher than previously anticipated, reports Shams Charania of The Athletic (Twitter link).
According to Charania, the NBA’s updated projections call for a ’23/24 cap of $136MM, with a luxury tax line of $165MM.
The league previously estimated a $134MM cap with a tax threshold around $162MM.
The NBA and NBPA have agreed not to increase the salary cap by more than 10% per year. Because the 2022/23 cap was $123,655,000, the cap for ’23/24 can’t exceed $136,020,500. Based on Charania’s reporting, it sounds like this year’s cap bump might reach that maximum 10% increase, or at least come very close to it.
The new projections will give more wiggle room to clubs whose team salaries for 2023/24 project to be around the tax line or at or above one of the two tax aprons, which will be approximately $7MM and $17.5MM above the tax threshold. Teams that project to have cap space, meanwhile, should have a couple extra million dollars to work with as they weigh how to use that room.
Various exceptions that are tied to the salary cap, including the mid-level exception, bi-annual exception, and rookie scale, will get a slight bump based on the new cap projection. So will the minimum and maximum salaries, which means that players like Nikola Jokic, Joel Embiid, Ja Morant, Zion Williamson, and Darius Garland will see their maximum-salary extensions increase by $3-4MM, as ESPN’s Bobby Marks tweets.
The official cap figures for the coming league year are typically announced right near the end of June. However, when the NBA updates its projections this close to free agency, it’s safe to assume the actual numbers will be very similar to these estimates.
So this saves GSW/Clips 32M in combined taxes from their luxury tax bill
yes, if clips and dubs put their money into the same piggy bank
The most relevant number is still the hard cap line, which stands now at 172 mm. If a team can’t deal with that (whether they’re at that line right now or not), then they can’t use full MLE, BAE or SNTs to acquire players. Most of the league, and almost all of last year’s playoff teams.
Cannot fathom why the players association agreed to these terms. Ownership gets to make more money every year but players limited themselves to a 10% increase? Combined with the luxury tax system that makes teams pay more to other owners than the players themselves as “fines” is absurd.
This is probably why the league prefers high schoolers and one and dones, no education.
No, the opposite. The players get a specified percentage of the owners’ revenue. All of the cap, the tax line, the apron, etc. are tied to that percentage, as are actual salaries retroactively.
Not one player in the league should make more than an Owner. Players are employees. I will never understand why people hate the rich. Everyone is entitled to their own money as you are to yours.
Because when the money is coming in most rational people prefer if it goes to the people that arent rich at all then the people already fabulously wealthy.
Also owners get huge returns when they sell the teams.
Also the players are the product, the owners just overcharge you to see it…
Eat the rich!
It’s to smooth out cap gains. There is no way they will hit that maximum every year so it’s irrelevant.
The luxury tax penalties are a different matter.
The players get a % of revenue so if the total value of all contracts paid is less than that % the league cuts a check which the NBAPA doles out among the player to make up for the discrepancy. Its like end of season bonus checks.
We’ll see…