The NBA and the players’ union had until December 15 to jointly exit the collective agreement, which runs until the 2023/24 season. But as expected, the two camps have for the moment preferred to postpone this deadline to February 8, just before the All-Star break.
Additional months which should allow negotiations to continue for the next collective agreement.
It is all the same a sign that the talks between the two camps are less simple than initially envisaged and that a lockout on July 1, 2023 is not completely excluded.
Because even if the NBA has never been so well financially, it is rumored that the majority of owners are pushing to put in place a “hard cap”. That is to say a “salary cap” strict to prevent franchises like the Clippers or the Warriors from spending lavishly to play for the title, to the detriment of much less wealthy franchises, which do not have the means to outrageously exceed the “salary cap” and pay tens, even hundreds of millions of dollars of “luxury tax”.
– salary cap : this is the payroll defined by the NBA. For the next season, it is announced at 125 million dollars, but could be even higher. NBA franchises have the ability to override it when extending their own players or through “exceptions.”
– luxury tax : in the NBA, the salary cap is not strict, and the NBA allows the richest franchises to exceed the threshold set with a tolerance margin of about 20%. In this case, next year, the franchises would normally have been able to spend up to $139 million. Then, for every dollar spent above this cap, franchises must pay the “luxury tax” to the NBA. A kind of tax that can be very expensive, and candidates for the title usually pay tens of millions of dollars each year. A sum then paid back to the franchises, good students, who did not pay the “luxury tax”.
