The cap is actually going down this year, depending on the new CBA, it might hover around where it lands, maybe go up or even down a bit from year to year, but nothing that will redefine things from where they are now. We are living in the new landscape and $17 million for a backup simply is not a good idea at all, under NO circumstances. Unless Biyombo can put up and start, he is on a brutal contract.
I would say it's a 5 million overpay just on theory alone, factor in his stats, and it's a $7+ million overpay. This is where I think contracts sit in the current salary cap:
Star- 25-30+
Starter- 16-20
6th man- 10-15
Bench- 6-9
Warmers and Rooks- 3-5
4 starters at 16= 64 million.
1 starter at 12= 76 million
1 6th man at 10= 86 million
4 role players at 6= 110 million
2 bench at 3= 116 million
Even at those low rates, once the other players in the league sign new deals, there is simply not going to be room to pay someone like Biyombo 17 million. The only reason players like Biyombo and Crabbe got deals like this was because teams had space in the transition period between have a team half+ composed of old CBA contracted players. Once the new deals start to proliferate through the league and balance themselves, the guys that signed deals that year are going to be on terrible deals. You may not see contracts like that again.
The days of players like Bismack Biyombo, Tyler Johnson, Luol Deng, Allen Crabbe and Timofey Mozgov getting contracts starting at $15 million a year are likely over. The market for quality role players may drop down to the $8.4 million MLE. That doesn’t mean a few free agents won’t be overpaid this summer, that seems to be an inevitability every year – but not on the scale of 2016.
