Teams Above Second Tax Apron Will Have Further Restrictions In New CBA

[RealGM Wiretap]

It had already been reported that in the new CBA that teams above the newly created second luxury tax apron would have restrictions on acquiring players. Those teams will lose the Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception and will be restricted to re-signing their own players, draft picks and players via the minimum exception.

In addition, there will be further restrictions on the NBA's most expensive teams. Those teams will not be able to send cash out in trades, trade first-round picks within a seven-year window and will not be able to sign players on the buyout market.

In addition, trade rules will be tweaked for those teams. Teams that are above the second tax apron, set at $17.5 million above the tax line, will not be able to receive more money in a trade than they send out.

That trade restriction could have impacted several recent high-profile deals. That includes Kevin Durant to the Phoenix Suns, Kyrie Irving to the Dallas Mavericks and James Harden to the Brooklyn Nets.

Via Adrian Wojnarowski/ESPN

[tigerae]

That's some crazy new rules. Not sure how the players agreed to that. No 1st rounders and no buyout market. The problem here is some teams have no interest in the buyout market or the players who are in the buyout market. As you saw with the Rockets. They refused to let Wall play which I believe hurt his career. Being a year away from the game really can hurt players.

There should have been some rules here for the lower cap teams, too. Like you can't take on a veteran player and just have him sit or worse away from the team.

[ecuhus1981]

Wow, they got serious. I like the changes. It is BS that a poorly run franchise used to be able to just be in a big market and spend enough to win. They could take on salary and send speculative picks, knowing that ring-chasing vets would flock to them on the buyout market as long as they had star or two. Agents would even put pressure on lower-tier teams to buy out their clients, or else they wouldn't steer future clients to them. This change removes all of that, and IMO the league is better for it.

[rtiff68]

Cheap owners rejoice!

Seriously. Why any fan would be happy about this baffles me.

[Lockdown504090]

gonna be real fun to watch the clippers and w's sign a bunch of crazy deals to stay above the second apron so they can continue to operate at high costs. is the repeater tax getting reworked?

[shrink]

Cheap owners rejoice!

Seriously. Why any fan would be happy about this baffles me.

Parity?

If you want fair competition, there are few owners in the league who can spend like Steve Ballmer. I wouldn’t call that “cheap.”

[rtiff68]

Cheap owners rejoice!

Seriously. Why any fan would be happy about this baffles me.

Parity?

If you want fair competition, there are few owners in the league who can spend like Steve Ballmer. I wouldn’t call that “cheap.”

The current restrictions aren’t enough to create parity? The Bucks, Grizzlies, and Nuggets are 3 of the league’s best teams.

Do most owners not spend like Balmer because they can’t, or because they won’t? Joe Lacob spends like Ballmer and he’s one of the least wealthy owners in the league. There’s been lots of scuttlebutt about other owners being pissed at Lacob because his spending basically torpedos their “we can’t spend like Ballmer” excuse.

[shrink]

Cheap owners rejoice!

Seriously. Why any fan would be happy about this baffles me.

Parity?

If you want fair competition, there are few owners in the league who can spend like Steve Ballmer. I wouldn’t call that “cheap.”

The current restrictions aren’t enough to create parity? The Bucks, Grizzlies, and Nuggets are 3 of the league’s best teams.

Do most owners not spend like Balmer because they can’t, or because they won’t? Joe Lacob spends like Ballmer and he’s one of the least wealthy owners in the league. There’s been lots of scuttlebutt about other owners being pissed at Lacob because his spending basically torpedos their “we can’t spend like Ballmer” excuse.

Lacob’s Arena in SF is a license to print money.

Historically, the three teams you’ve mentioned have all been forced to operate as kid brothers. Memphis is one of the NBA’s smallest markets, and for years could only charge a fraction of the price of the big name places. MIL for years was a no man’s land, and DEN even would sell pickets to avoid the luxury tax. All three gained success, not from being able to wave a ton of money at a star free agent, but finding a future star player in the draft.

And to each of these team’s credit, when they finally got a top team, they were willing to go over the lux to compete (well, MEM soon .. they would have preferred to keep Kyle Anderson). But while these teams can handle a year or two above the lux, they can’t sustain year after year. This is what the repeater tax is designed to do, but now you have a few owners that are so rich, they can ignore that extra penalty as well.

That’s why we have the new rules. To make the players union happy, the old rules were cost prohibitive, but we discovered they weren’t equally cost prohibitive to every owner.