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How the NBA’s New CBA Impacts Trade Market, Free Agency
- Updated: December 15, 2016
The full deal isn’t done just yet, but the NBA announced Wednesday it had reached a tentative accord with the NBPA on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement.
Once ratified, the agreement will bring about significant changes to roster sizes, season length, player salaries and D-League assignments. You can find details on those proposed tweaks in reports from NBA.com’s David Aldridge and The Vertical’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
Here, we’ll narrow the focus to how the new rules could impact potential trades and free agency.
Thanks for Staying
The last CBA generally prevented marquee players from leaving the small-market clubs that drafted them, despite extension rules that actually made it smarter for most to choose free agency over the three-year add-on. Kevin Durant hung around with the Oklahoma City Thunder franchise for nine years before bouncing, Anthony Davis re-signed with the New Orleans Pelicans in 2015, and, mostly, stars entering restricted free agency after their rookie deals didn’t leave.
John Wall, Paul George, Kawhi Leonard, Bradley Beal, Draymond Green, Klay Thompson—just a few recent examples of a larger trend in which just about everyone of consequence agreed to a new deal with his incumbent team.
The new CBA makes extensions far more appealing.
Wojnarowski reports “Designated veteran star players will be able to sign five-year extensions with a year left on their current deals—an additional year over the four years previously allowed.”
And as ESPN.com’s Zach Lowe explains, cap restrictions won’t matter in deals of this kind:
Key note re new Designated Player extension: salary in Year 1 of ext can be any amt up to 35% of cap (i.e. max) even if team has no cap room
— Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) December 15, 2016
The upshot there: Guys like Russell Westbrook, DeMarcus Cousins and Paul George could ink new extensions this summer, which would keep them under contract with their teams for six more years. Best of all for their current teams, they’d never even reach free agency—if they qualify.
Only guys who meet various performance criteria — including All-NBA team — will be eligible for Designated Player extensions, sources say
— Zach Lowe …
