Here is what we know about the new Collective Bargaining Agreement
Updated: Apr 2

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The National Basketball Association and it's players will have labor peace for years to come. The league and its players came to an agreement early Saturday on a new seven-year collective bargaining agreement, the NBA announced. It is still pending ratification, though that process is almost certainly no more than a formality. The deal will begin this summer and will last at least through the 2028-29 season. Either side can opt out then; otherwise, it will last through 2029-30.
Adam Silver gets his wish with the addition of an in-season tournament beginning in 2024. Silver has advocated for the mid-season tournament for years.
The new agreement adds a second layer of luxury Tax limits, that when reached 17.5 million over the luxury tax threshold), will keep teams from using their mid-level exception to sign players. To Silver's disappoint, the new agreement does not limit a team's spending that would have essentially installed an absolute ceiling on what can be spent each season and help balance the playing field between the teams that are willing to pay enormous tax bills and those who aren't.

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Post- season awards such as Most Valuable Player will require a nominee to participate in at least 65 games limiting the practice of load management. The change is meant to incentivise players as the awards are tied to the players' eligibility to receive a max contract or adjustment to their current deal. Neither the league nor the National Basketball Players Association released specifics publicly.
The NBA's one-and-done will remain in the new CBA , and probably will for at least the term of the next CBA.
What We Don’t Know Yet There are a lot of items we don’t have details on yet. This includes:
Cap smoothing: Will this happen or not? If not, we’ll see another major cap spike when the new media rights deals hit. That’s something both sides were initially eager to avoid.
Luxury tax bands: The luxury tax bands, and the related penalties, only rise by $5 million per band now. Were those bands enlarged at all?
Extend-and-trade rules: With the standard Veteran Extension rules being adjusted, were the very restrictive extend-and-trade rules changed at all?
Trade requests/demands: Was anything done to prevent trade requests or demands? There was a lot of blustering about this being a problem, but was anything done to try to fix it?
Changes to rosters: Are there more changes beyond the addition of the third Two-Way spot?
Expansion details: Was anything changed as far as expansion goes? It seems like expansion is inevitable, perhaps in the life of this new CBA.
The owners will have to vote on what the negotiators have hammered out, and the players will have to vote to approve the deal as well. Then comes the actual writing of the document — the most recent CBA checked in at around 600 pages containing nearly 5,000 paragraphs and 200,000 words. Much of it will be the same; much of it will need revising.