Get ready for a crazy NBA summer, folks.
You already know commissioner Adam Silver is.
The NBA’s salary cap is preparing to hit $89 million over the offseason, and it’s slated to jump above $105 million in 2017. Though player salaries will rise right along with the cap, this infusion of money has created at least a two-year anomaly where most of the league’s teams will have cap space. And as Silver noted to USA Today‘s Jeff Zillgitt, the repercussions of this financial boom will be extensive and unpredictable:
“It will be disruptive and having been around the league for a long time, I only know it’s going to be disruptive in ways that we can’t even predict,” Silver said. “It’s not the way we modeled the CBA going into the last collective-bargaining agreement. We thought we would have more regular increases from year to year (in the salary cap).
One such symptom to look out for includes players signing below-market deals that still give them substantial raises but allows their team to seduce other stars who are on the same page.
Take the Kevin Durant and Golden State Warriors situation. Realistically, if the Warriors want to offer him a max deal, they need to get rid of at least three of Harrison Barnes, Andrew Bogut, Andre Iguodala and Shaun Livingston. But say Durant is willing to accept less than the $25 million-plus he could make in the first year of his new deal, because it’s so much more than the $20.2 million he’s making now. Even if he wants $21 million, that’s $4 million or more in additional wiggle room for Golden State—almost the entirety of Livingston’s 2016-17 cap hit.
These situations are starker as you move down the totem pole. Al Horford, for example, is making $12 million this season. Does he necessarily need to see that number double, or might he accept, say, $18 million in the first year of his next contract in order to aide the pursuit of better teammates?
And that’s only the beginning.
Like Adam Silver said, we cannot totally predict what the ramifications will be.
We only know two things: that we know nothing at all, and that this summer is going to be batshit crazy.
