Next summer was supposed to be a lot like this summer for the NBA. The cap would explode, and free agency would be crazy—crazy expensive.
But, as of now, it won’t be as crazy expensive as 2016.
The league’s salary cap jumped by nearly $25 million this summer, from around $70 million to just over $94 million. Next year’s spike was always going to be smaller. But it was also supposed to be comparable.
Initial projections ranged from $107 million to $110 million or more. Now, though, that forecast has slipped to $102 million, according to Basketball Insiders’ Eric Pincus:
The NBA's projection for the 2017-18 season has fallen from $107 million to $102 million, filing story shortly at @BBallInsiders
— Eric Pincus (@EricPincus) July 7, 2016
Around $5 million doesn’t seem like a huge deal. But it will be to some teams.
Consider the Golden State Warriors. They have to account for re-signing Kevin Durant next summer. He signed a one-plus-one deal, and they don’t own his Bird rights, so they must sign him into cap space. Losing $5 million of flexibility matters. It won’t cost them Durant, but that’s money they cannot give to a free agent like Andre Iguodala.
Any teams who spent aggressively this summer with the intention of making a splash in 2017, meanwhile, now have $5 million less in their free-agency war chest. Though $5 million won’t buy you much in this market, it’s still costly flexibility. Certain teams may now have to dump contracts they would prefer to keep, just so they can open up max room.
It should be noted that these projections are fluid this early in the process. This forecast can, and will, climb. But the lower starting number does make it less likely that the cap reaches $110 to $115 million, since that’s such a huge leap from this benchmark.
When you put it that way, teams who were banking on ambitious projections could now have between $8 and $13 million less to spend. And that most certainly matters.
