The NBA will have labor peace through the end of the decade after the league’s owners and the NBPA announced a new seven-year Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) recently. The new deal kicks in this July 1, and while at its core it stays the same — basically a 50/50 split of Basketball Related Income that flows into the league — there are changes, such as Adam Silver’s pet mid-season tournament is happening.
Monday, some more details of the new NBA CBA leaked. Here’s what we learned.
• There will be 65-game threshold players must meet to be eligible for postseason awards such as MVP, Defensive Player of the Year, All-NBA, etc. (the league’s attempt to limit load management by its best players). However, there is a little flexibility built into that number and Shams Charania of The Athletic detailed it: Players have to play at least 20 minutes in each of the 65 games (no just tagging in for two minutes and getting credit), however, they can have two games that are “near misses” in minutes (meaning they played at least 15 minutes in those games). Also, there are protections for players who suffer a season-ending injury (62 games) and “bad faith circumstances.”
• The mid-level exception for teams not over the luxury tax line increases by 7.5%, up to $12.2 million next season (also via Shams Charania). The Room Exception jumps 30% to $7.6 million next year and now can be three years long (it had been two).
• There are more limits on the highest-spending franchises. Teams over the new second tax apron ($17.5 million more than the luxury tax line) cannot trade their first-round draft pick seven years out (as other teams can, only six years). Also, go over that apron two years out of four and that team’s first-round pick will be dropped to last in the first round, reports Tim Bontemps of ESPN.
• This CBA allows more flexibility for veterans looking to sign an extension (those extensions can start at 140% of the player’s previous year’s salary, up from 120%), but also players can now decline a player-option year on a contract and sign a long-term extension with a team at salaries that start below that player-option number, reports Zach Lowe of ESPN. For a real-world example, Chris Paul had to decline his player option and then become a free agent to sign a four-year, $120 million contract to stay with the Phoenix Suns. Under the new CBA, there would have been no need for CP3 to go to free agency first, he could have just signed that as an extension after declining his player option year.
• About that mid-season tournament — which will run through December — players will get a financial bump for making the final eight teams, and Adrian Wojnarowski and Bobby Marks of ESPN have the numbers: Players on the winning team each will get $500,000, players on the runner up will get $200,000, players on the two teams that lose in the semi-finals (final four) will get $100,000, and players on the four teams that lose in the quarter-finals (final eight) will get $50,000.
• The bonus in Exhibit 10 contracts — training camp contracts where the player gets a bonus for signing with the team’s G-League team — jumps to $75,000 from $50,000. That’s a big boost for some G-League players.