The NBA and players’ union have agreed to extend the opt-out deadline for the current collective-bargaining agreement to beyond Dec. 15, per Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.
The sides had until that date to decide if they wanted to carry on as is, or give notice of plans to opt out in a year from now. The new date is expected to come sometime in February, per Wojnarowski.
The current CBA expires at the end of the 2023-24 season.
At last check, the NBA was pushing for a hard cap, while the union is resisting such an idea.
The league currently allows teams to spend above the cap, though they are fined, or “taxed,” for doing so. A hard cap would prohibit teams from going above a certainly salary for any reason but to re-sign their own players.
Again, this would not be viewed by the players as a favorable arrangement, given it would limit what teams could spend, and therefore, what players can earn in salary.
“There will be a lockout before there’s a hard cap,” a source from the players’ side told Marc Stein of The Stein Line.
Not all 30 team owners are in favor of a hard cap, Stein reported, and the idea at this point could merely be on the league’s wish list — as opposed to a major bargaining point in the next round of collective bargaining.
“In the NBA’s current labor deal with the NBPA, there are only three scenarios in which a team becomes hard-capped: 1. Acquiring a free agent via sign-and-trade; 2. Signing a free agent with the non-taxpayer mid-level exception; 3. Signing a free agent with the bi-annual exception,” Stein wrote.
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