Collective Bargaining Agreement Rumors

NBA, Union Making Progress Toward New CBA

February 27th, 2023 at 10:23am CST by Arthur Hill

The NBA and its players union have made “significant progress” toward reaching a new collective bargaining agreement in recent weeks and are finding common ground on several important issues, writes Shams Charania of The Athletic.

Both sides are motivated to get a CBA in place before the March 31 deadline, which has been extended twice already after originally being set for December 15. That’s the deadline for either side to opt out of the current arrangement, which is set to expire after the 2023/24 season.

Sources tell Charania that the NBPA has notified the league office that it hopes to finalize a new CBA sometime in March.

“We want to finish this deal soon and certainly want this wrapped up before the (March 31) deadline,” said a high-ranking source involved in negotiations. “It’s close — we need to dot the I’s and cross the T’s.”

According to Charania, the league and the union are negotiating a new luxury tax system that would increase the lower tier and lessen the penalties for teams that are barely above the threshold. With salaries rapidly increasing, Charania states that a new bracket tier will allow teams to keep pace without incurring a heavy tax bill.

Charania notes that the current system imposes a tax rate of $1.50 for every dollar over the cap for teams that exceed the tax threshold by less than $5MM. That rises to $1.75 per each dollar for teams that are over by $5MM but less than $10MM. The NBA and the union want to redefine those brackets without getting rid of the punitive penalties for teams at the upper tax levels.

There’s more from Charania on the state of negotiations:

The NBA wants language in the new CBA regarding load management and the frequent resting of star players. Charania states that the league is also concerned about whether Diamond Sports’ Regional Sports Network is able to continue broadcasting games for 16 of the 30 teams.
Charania cites “momentum” for lowering the draft age to 18 and eliminating the current “one-and-done” system in college basketball, but he adds that the NBPA wants to include conditions that would protect veteran players.
Contract extension limits, which are currently 120% in the first year of a new extension, may be raised to 140% or 150%. That allows players with contracts that have become below market value to lock down significant raises moving forward. Charania notes that players who could benefit immediately include Toronto’s OG Anunoby, Sacramento’s Domantas Sabonis and Utah’s Lauri Markkanen.
The league also wants to smooth out upcoming increases in the salary cap and hopes to avoid a repeat of the sudden spike that happened in 2016.

And-Ones: Postseason Awards, Cacok, Grenades, Mock Draft

February 14th, 2023 at 9:18pm CST by Dana Gauruder

The NBA and the Players Association have discussed a games played threshold regarding postseason awards, Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic reports.

The discussions are part of Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations. The league has become increasingly concerned with load management, particularly regarding top players. Tying eligibility for awards to games played would be a way of discouraging them from taking nights off.

It’s believed the concept will be in the final CBA in some form, but negotiations are fluid. Only three of the top 12 vote-getters for the Most Valuable Player award last season played more than 68 games, Vorkunov notes.

We have more from around the basketball world:

Former NBA forward Devontae Cacok has signed with CSKA Moscow, according to a press release from the Russian club. Cacok had been playing for the Pistons’ G League club, the Motor City Cruise, where he averaged of 19.9 points and 9.7 rebounds in 31.2 minutes through 14 games. Cacok has appeared in 36 NBA games over the past three seasons with the Lakers and Spurs after going undrafted out of UNC Wilmington in 2019. He was waived by the Pistons this fall before joining their G League squad.
The unwritten rule discouraging passes from being thrown late in the shot clock for a teammate to take a low percentage shot is detailed by ESPN’s Tim MacMahon. Such passes are called “grenades,” since it forces a teammate to lower his shooting percentages. League-wide, players shot 29.7% last season on contested field goal attempts after receiving a pass with two seconds or less remaining on the shot clock, MacMahon notes.
With the trade deadline behind us, Jonathan Wasserman of Bleacher Report takes his latest swing at a two-round mock draft. Who goes after Victor Wembanyama and Scoot Henderson? Wasserman has the Hornets selecting guard Amen Thompson with the No. 3 pick.

CBA Early Opt-Out Deadline Extended To March 31

February 6th, 2023 at 5:22pm CST by Arthur Hill

5:22pm: The NBA and NBPA have agreed to extend the early opt-out deadline to March 31, the league’s PR department tweets.

10:59am: The NBA and its players union are expected to extend Wednesday’s early opt-out deadline for the collective bargaining agreement, tweets ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.

Wojnarowski also hears that the league appears willing to back away from its demand for an upper spending limit on payrolls (Twitter link). The players have been strongly opposed to that proposal, which would create a de facto hard cap in place of the current luxury tax system.

According to Wojnarowski, the NBA’s Board of Governors voted Friday to give its labor relations committee the authorization to extend the deadline again, and the league and the National Basketball Players Association appear headed in that direction.

The early opt-out deadline was originally set for December 15, but the two sides agreed to extend it until February 8. The current seven-year CBA will expire after the 2023/24 season, but the league and the players’ union hold a mutual option to terminate the agreement at the end of the current league year, which is June 30.

The extension will give negotiators more time to discuss a potential new deal without the imminent threat of an opt-out. Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press reported last month that another extension appeared likely.

Wojnarowski notes that teams had been hoping for a new agreement prior to this week’s trade deadline so they could have more clarity about the league’s long-term financial structure (Twitter link).

And-Ones: Faried, CBA, Wembanyama, Thompson Twins

January 24th, 2023 at 3:06pm CST by Luke Adams

In a conversation with Sam Yip of HoopsHype, Kenneth Faried admits that it has been “extremely difficult” to be out of the NBA since 2019, since he believes that he’s still capable of playing at that level and helping a team. Faried is currently suiting up for the Mexico City Capitanes in the G League as he seeks an NBA comeback.

“At the same time, patience is a virtue. I’m very patient,” Faried said. “I’m working hard towards showing that I can still do it at that level. … I’m ready, I’m focused, I’m locked in, I’m a better vet, a better person, a better leader and I don’t even need to be a leader. I can be quiet and sit back and just follow whoever the leader is.”

As Yip points out, Faried is one of several NBA veterans playing for Mexico City’s G League team. Shabazz Napier, Gary Clark, and Mason Jones are among the other Capitanes players hoping for a call-up.

“For us to now be on a team, and all trying to have the same kind of goal to make it back to the NBA and try to find a way is great, because we’re not trying to be selfish to each other,” Faried said. “We’re trying to help each other. And everyone’s here trying to help each other get better, trying to showcase that we’re still good enough in great shape and ready for whatever may happen, ready for a contract for real.”

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

Don’t expect the NBA’s next Collective Bargaining Agreement to include an upper spending limit (ie. a hard cap), ESPN’s Brian Windhorst said during the latest episode of his Hoop Collective podcast. The NBA was reportedly pushing a de facto hard cap earlier in CBA discussions, but Windhorst believes negotiations between the two sides would be far more contentious if the league was still prioritizing that concept. He does think there will be changes made to the luxury tax system, however.
Although the 2017 CBA improved the guidelines for veteran contract extensions and led to a huge uptick in those deals, the rule limiting players to a 20% raise for the first year of an extension is outdated, according to Bobby Marks of ESPN, who notes that it makes it virtually impossible for clubs to extend players who are coming off team-friendly deals. Marks suggests tweaking the rule to allow teams to offer the same amount in an extension that they’d be able to in free agency.
Top prospect Victor Wembanyama is expected to play for France’s national team in two World Cup qualifying contests next month, as Johnny Askounis of Eurohoops writes. The February 23 and 26 games conflict with the EuroLeague schedule, but Wembyanama’s Metropolitans 92 aren’t a EuroLeague team.
Twins Amen Thompson and Ausar Thompson, projected top-10 picks in the 2023 NBA draft, are looking forward to competing against other top players from their draft class and showing how the Overtime Elite program has benefited them, writes Jacob Polacheck of ZagsBlog.com.

NBA, NBPA Likely To Extend CBA Opt-Out Deadline

January 19th, 2023 at 10:52pm CST by Dana Gauruder

There’s a good chance that the February 8 deadline for either the league or the National Basketball Players Association to opt out of the current Collective Bargaining Agreement will be pushed back once again, according to Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver said during a press conference in Paris, France on Thursday that negotiations are ongoing. NBPA executive director Tamika Tremaglio was also in Paris for the Bulls-Pistons game but the negotiations were taking place in the U.S.

“Our colleagues are back in New York, negotiating as we speak,” Silver said. “They’ve been meeting all week, just going issue by issue and trying to work through those issues that separate us. I would say, though, that I think we start from a very strong foundation.”

The original opt-out date was December 15 but the league’s Board of Governors and the Players Association agreed to an extension.

“There’s a strong sense of partnership between the players and the league,” Silver said. “That doesn’t mean we don’t have disagreements.”

The current CBA, 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).

It’s expected that the new labor agreement will allow players to enter the draft straight out of high school. The current rule in which players must be 19 years old or be one year removed from high school was instituted in 2006.

The league’s owners have been pushing an “upper spending limit” that would significantly tighten the rules on how much teams can spend each year on their roster, effectively serving as a hard cap to replace the current luxury tax system.

And-Ones: NBAGL, Dunn, Noel, Klutch, CBA, 2023 Draft

January 14th, 2023 at 12:04pm CST by Luke Adams

The NBA G League will have an increased presence at this year’s NBA All-Star weekend, having introduced a new Next Up Game that will take place on Sunday, February 19 prior to the NBA’s All-Star Game.

As outlined in a G League press release, the game will feature 24 NBAGL standouts, with 10 of those players selected by fan vote.

Players on G League contracts or two-way deals who have appeared in at least four games this season will be eligible to participate in the game. However, players on standard NBA contracts won’t be — that means you wouldn’t be able to vote for, say, Warriors center James Wiseman, despite the fact that he has appeared in 10 games this season for Santa Cruz.

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

Chase Hughes of NBC Sports Washington take a closer look at Kris Dunn‘s efforts to “get back to the NBA the correct way.” The former No. 5 overall pick is playing this season for the Capital City Go-Go, the Wizards‘ G League affiliate, and is seeing his work on a revamped jump shot pay dividends. In 20 G League games, Dunn is making 58.2% of his shots from the field and 42.1% of his three-pointers.
Pistons center Nerlens Noel and Klutch Sports reached a settlement in their financial dispute this week, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic, who tweets that Noel has agreed to pay Rich Paul and Klutch the commission fees on his 2020 Knicks deal and has dropped his legal proceedings against the agency. Noel sued Paul and Klutch back in 2021 after the agency filed a grievance over $200K in commission that the big man hadn’t paid.
Although there’s still no agreement between the NBA and the players’ union on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, there’s too much money at stake to expect a work stoppage, Steve Bulpett of Heavy.com writes in a check-in on the league’s labor talks.
Sam Vecenie of The Athletic and Jeremy Woo of SI.com both published new 2023 mock drafts this week. There are plenty of differences between the two mocks starting at No. 3, where Vecenie has Amen Thompson of Overtime Elite and Woo has Arkansas’ Anthony Black. Woo has Thompson at No. 6 in his mock, while Vecenie has Black all the way down at No. 11 in his.

NBA, NBPA Move CBA Opt-Out Deadline To February 8

December 14th, 2022 at 12:50pm CST by Luke Adams

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.

NBA, NBPA Will Push Back CBA Opt-Out Deadline

December 9th, 2022 at 1:23pm CST by Luke Adams

The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association have agreed to extend the deadline to opt out of the league’s current Collective Bargaining Agreement, reports ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (Twitter links).

The NBA and NBPA have been engaged in negotiations on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, but will need more time to find common ground on all the issues being discussed.

The current CBA, 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. The deadline for either side to exercise that opt-out clause had been next Thursday (December 15), but it will be pushed into the new year, according to Wojnarowski.

Sources tell ESPN that the new opt-out deadline is expected to land sometime in February. The exact date will be finalized at next Wednesday’s Board of Governors meeting, Woj adds.

As Bobby Marks of ESPN notes (via Twitter), when the two sides negotiated the current CBA back in 2016, they postponed the opt-out deadline by nearly a month – to January 13, 2017 – despite reaching an agreement in mid-December, since it took some time to ratify the new deal. So if negotiations continue into February, it’s possible another extension would be necessary.

Although the NBA and the players’ union have been widely expected to work out a new agreement without any sort of work stoppage, the league has reportedly been pushing harder this time around for the implementation of an “upper spending limit,” which would function like a hard cap. The players’ side has been adamantly opposed to the idea.

And-Ones: Campazzo, Podoloff Trophy, Scouting, CBA Talks

December 7th, 2022 at 11:55am CST by Luke Adams

Free agent guard Facundo Campazzo, who spent the last two seasons in Denver and the early part of 2022/23 in Dallas, appears set to resume his career in the EuroLeague, but his destination has yet to be determined.

According to Aris Barkas of Eurohoops.net, Serbian club Crvena Zvezda has offered Campazzo a two-year contract worth 1.8 million Euros this season and 2.5 million Euros for 2023/24, with a third-year player option. The team also intends to cover a significant chunk of the remaining money Campazzo still owes to Real Madrid as part of the 2020 buyout agreement that allowed him to go to the NBA, says Barkas.

However, since Real Madrid still holds Campazzo’s EuroLeague rights, the Spanish club will have 10 days to decide whether or not to match the offer, per Barkas. That clock began on Tuesday.

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

The NBA announced on Tuesday that the Maurice Podoloff Trophy, named after the league’s first commissioner, will now be awarded to the team that finishes each regular season with the best record. As Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press observes, the Maurice Podoloff Trophy was previously awarded to the NBA’s annual Most Valuable Player up until 2021, but has since been revamped and repurposed.
The NBA has loosened the rules related to the scouting of high school prospects, reports Jonathan Givony of ESPN. Teams will now be permitted to attend a handful of important high school basketball events, despite the fact that the participants will be at least a year away from draft eligibility. There are no immediate plans to remove the one-and-done rule for draft prospects in the near future, Givony adds, so for the time being this change is simply about giving teams a head-start on evaluating top prospects before they enter college.
Providing an update on the NBA’s labor talks, Marc Stein writes in his latest Substack article that he believes the league and the players’ union will likely agree to push back the December 15 opt-out deadline so that they can amicably continue their negotiations. Interestingly, Stein also says the NBA’s push for an “upper spending limit,” first reported in October, appears to be more serious than it has been in the past — in previous negotiations, the NBA dropped that request to gain other concessions, but the league is pursuing the de facto hard cap more “vigorously” this time around, according to Stein.

And-Ones: Rookie Rankings, MVP Ratings, Tremaglio, Officiating

December 5th, 2022 at 10:54pm CST by Dana Gauruder

Top pick Paolo Banchero has missed some games due to an ankle sprain but the top pick of the draft still leads ESPN Jonathan Givony’s rookie power rankings (Insider link). The Magic forward was averaging 21.8 points, 6.5 rebounds and 3.6 assists per game entering the week. The sixth overall pick, the Pacers’ Bennedict Mathurin, sits in second place while averaging 18.5 points off the bench. Pistons guard Jaden Ivey (15.9 points, 4.3 assists) holds the No. 3 spot.

We have more NBA-related info:

Celtics forward Jayson Tatum tops USA Today/Gannett staffers’ early-season Most Valuable Player ratings, propelled by Boston’s strong start. Tatum entered Monday’s action ranked fifth in the league in scoring (30.7). Former MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo holds the runner-up spot with the Suns’ Devin Booker in third place.
Negotiating the Collective Bargaining Agreement for the first time, National Basketball Players Association executive director Tamika Tremaglio is leaning on players agents to determine the best course of action, Liz Mullen of the Sports Business Journal reports. Tremaglio has reached out to all NBPA-certified agents for advice and is having frequent discussions with the most influential agents. One likely point of contention is the NBA’s desire for a stronger upper limit on player salaries, which some agents view as a hard cap.
Traveling calls are piling up, culminating in 13 such turnovers during the Cavaliers–Knicks game on Sunday. Carrying and palming calls are also on the rise. “My job as the head coach — for lack of a better description — of our team, is to make sure that the rule book is being enforced,” the NBA’s senior vice president of referee development and training, Monty McCutchen, said to ESPN’s Tim Bontemps. “And when we emphasize traveling and sequencing and it picks up another part of footwork, then it needs to be adjudicated properly.”