Projecting forward, next season will …

Projecting forward, next season will bring a massive revenue downturn. No party wants the cap to fall in sync with that. It is bad for players and teams. It has been widely reported, including at ESPN, that the most convenient solution would be carrying over this season’s cap figure — $109 million — into 2020-21, and placing a much larger percentage of each player’s salary into escrow so that players do not end up with more than their guaranteed share of actual revenue. That sounds simple, but it’s not. It requires thorny negotiation between the league and union, and among the players. (A one-year salary reduction, via escrow, could penalize some players more than others.) It could end up requiring a wholesale rewriting of major parts of the CBA, though nobody wants that, either. Point is, there are lots of people around the NBA ecosystem who don’t expect free agency to start until sometime in November, or perhaps even early December. (Again: Everything is fluid; no one knows anything.)