We got an update on Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) talks this week and the first bit of potential changes. According to The Athletic’s Shams Charania, significant progress has been made in recent weeks on key issues between the NBA and the Players Union (NBPA), and there’s hope that a deal is within grasp. The current deadline to get a deal done is March 31, and the NBPA has informed the league they intend to complete a deal by then.
Charania also provided some notes on potential changes to the CBA that could come. One would be altering the lower luxury tax tiers to make it more viable for teams to get into the tax. They’re also discussing lowering the NBA draft age eligibility to 18 years old, and implementing cap smoothing to prevent massive cap spikes like in 2016.
The other change that is being discussed is modifying the current contract extension limits. Per Charania, both sides are discussing increasing the maximum first-year salary in an extension from 120 percent to 140-150 percent. The extension rules were bound to be changed considering how much the salary cap has risen over the past seven years, but exactly how they could get changed was unknown until now.
Below is a breakdown of the current extension rules versus the newly proposed ones, and the ripple effects they can have on the league.