The NBA's current Collective Bargaining Agreement went into effect fairly recently, in 2023, and many of the more punitive restrictions on tax apron teams weren't implemented until 2024, but we're already feeling the impact of the new CBA on the league's highest-spending clubs.
The Celtics, Bucks, Suns, and Timberwolves, who are operating above the second tax apron in 2024/25, were unable to sign any outside free agents for more than the veteran's minimum this offseason. They've also faced significant limitations on the trade market, including an inability to aggregate salaries, trade cash, use previous trade exceptions, or take back more salary than they send out.
Those restrictions have been a major factor in the clubs' relative inactivity on the trade market. Boston and Milwaukee are two of just four teams around the NBA who haven't made any trades this summer. The Lakers, another one of those four teams who haven't made a deal, are operating just a hair below the second apron).
Meanwhile, of the four second-apron teams, the Suns are the only one to have acquired a player on an NBA contract in an offseason trade. That deal - David Roddy for E.J. Liddell - was a straightforward salary dump that ultimately resulted in the newly acquired player (Liddell) being waived for luxury tax savings, which serves as an important reminder -- on top of their roster-building limitations, those apron teams will be on the hook for substantial tax payments at season's end.
Still, as impactful as the latest Collective Bargaining Agreement has already been on some of the NBA's most expensive rosters, some of the toughest penalties being imposed on the league's biggest spenders are still to come in 2025. Today, we're taking a closer look at a couple more notable ways in which the current CBA will complicate teams' dynasty-building efforts in the coming years by further disincentivizing big spending.
Let's dive in...
In their zeal to destroy the warriors, the league destroyed itself. Sad.
Nothing was said about if the cap increases? Could that help bring second appron teams under?
The second apron and the tax brackets will increase along with the cap, but player salaries will continue rising as well.
It will help if the cap rises 10% per year (since year-to-year raises are capped at 8%), but a team operating far above the second apron can’t simply count on being bailed out by cap increases unless it has contracts coming off the books.
It made the lakers cowardice. They didn’t sign Valencunas, didn’t trade for Trae.
What the article doesn’t discuss is the motivation underlying these rules, and how it will push new rules to further create parity and eliminate tanking in the next CBA.
Get ready to start hearing “the NBA has a tanking problem”.
This upcoming season, with an unprecedented 6 teams planning to tank (Portland, Utah, Chicago, Brooklyn, Washington and Charlotte), is already being discussed as something that can never happen again. That means in about 1 in 5 games, one of the teams wants to lose. Those non-competitive games are unappealing to ticket purchasers, broadcast media, and advertisers. And tanking on this scale threatens the integrity of the league.
The problem for the League is that penalizing the tanking have-nots doesn’t help. The solution requires reducing the need to tank, and that can only be done by shifting the balance in access to draft picks and free agents talent away from the wealthier teams, and toward the have-nots.