In a surprise turn, the National Basketball Association is pulling back on its salary-cap projection for the 2017-18 season, according to a league memo obtained by ESPN, and it could complicate the Golden State Warriors’ efforts to keep their new super team together. That challenge was just projected to be $5 million more hard.
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The NBA credits a “substantial increase in projected player spending for 2016-17” that will reduce the league’s projected shortfall to the players to $200 million.
The players now receive up to 51 percent of the basketball-related income, which this year topped $6.5 billion. Next year, Steph Curry and Andre Iguodala will become free agents. The reason for the drop in cap is due to the unexpected rise in salaries. Golden State could exceed the cap to sign Durant to a starting salary of $31.8 million with Non-Bird Rights next July, which is just less than $2 million fewer than the number Basketball Insiders projects as his starting max under a $102 million salary cap.
The salary cap projects to climb to $108 million in 2018-19, $109 million in 2019-20 and $114 million in 2020-21.
This estimates may turn out to be irrelevant as the league and players can opt out of the current collective bargaining agreement in December. This $6 million may not be enough to dictate a marquee free agent’s destination, but could prove costly in a team’s efforts to re-sign a high-end role player.
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The projected maximum salaries for 2017-18, based on a $102 million cap, would near $24 million for players with less than seven years of experience, $28.8 million with seven to nine and $33.5 million for those with 10 years or more.
