The NBA business is good — and that means the salary cap number is about to jump nearly $5 million a year.
The NBA salary cap for 2014-15 will be $63.065 million the league has announced, a healthy 7.5 percent jump from $58.679 million last season, the NBA announced.
The luxury tax level also jumps more than seven percent up to $76.829 million. The minimum team salary (the floor, as it’s called) will be $56.759 million, although there is no penalty for being below it (if a team does finish the year below it they have to pay the difference, with that money divided up among the players on the roster).
The mid-level exception for teams above the salary cap line but below the tax line will be $5.305 million. For teams over the tax-line their mid-level is $3.278 million, and the mid-level for team under the cap (who then go over) is $2.732 million.
All these numbers go into effect at midnight and the clock turn to July 10, the first day teams can sign players following a moratorium that started July 1 (all the deals you’ve been reading about at PBT, such as Kyle Lowry in Toronto or Marcin Gortat with the Wizards were agreements that couldn’t be finalized until the 10th).
The cap numbers are derived as part of the Collective Bargaining Agreement — the players and owners basically split the NBA’s “basketball related income” down the middle 50/50 and the cap numbers come out of that to divide up that spending. A piece of every player’s pay check is held in a reserve and then they get all or some (or occasionally none) of that money back when the numbers are added up at the end of the season to make sure the split of revenue is correct.
The NBA salary cap is expected to increase some again for 2015-16 then make a much bigger leap the year after that when the money from a new national television deal floods the market.