The reason why the NBA free agency market can be steaming hot like it was in 2016 when players like Timofey Mozgov were getting $16 million per season contracts, or frost bite inducing cold like it was in the 2017 off-season when Nerlens Noel could garner nothing more than the qualifying offer is pretty simple: the salary cap.
The salary cap took a massive jump largely because of a new television deal heading into the 2016-17 season, which is why almost every team had cap space and some of them didn’t know what to do with it all (ahem the Lakers and Blazers), but when the playoffs were extremely short last season (thank the Warriors for that) the cap didn’t rise as much as was originally projected, landing at $99 million which basically freaked teams out and caused many of them not to spend.
According to a report from The Vertical, the NBA has set their cap (remember this can still change) for the 2018-19 and 2019-20 seasons.
Sources: NBA has informed teams of projected salary cap in next two offseasons: $101M for 2018-19, $108M for 2019-20, subject to change.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) September 29, 2017
The slight increase for next off-season likely means that (most) teams will still not spend widely for middling talent and try to develop market-level deals for players and save their money for a shot at whomever the big fish happens to be in free agency (there will be a ton next summer).
However, the following season with a $7 million cap increase could mean another summer of “funny money” as teams celebrate all of their cash flow and convince themselves that a player like Evan Turner is the missing piece to make them a playoff contender (he’s not).
Teams have definitely altered their two to five year strategies in the past week with the new reported caps for upcoming years and lottery reform in 2019.
