Details here:
- Significant increases across the board in player contracts, including maximum salaried players. Minimum salaries for veterans with 10 or more years of service, players with five or more years’ service, rookie players on their rookie scale contracts and salaries of players who sign under the mid-level exception will all increase. The bi-annual exception will also increase. The expected maximum salary in 2017-18 for a player with 10 or more year’s service—including many of the game’s superstars, like LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Chris Paul, each of whom can become an unrestricted free agent next summer, will be $36 million, allowing a player to sign a five-year deal with his existing team for around $210 million. The maximum salary for players with between 7 and 9 year’s experience is projected to be $31 million. All of the contracts will be tied to the salary cap, which is different from the previous CBA. Such huge deals for vets with that much service time have been next to impossible to create in recent years because of the so-called “Over 36” rule, which was put in place to keep teams from signing older players to long contracts they would never reach the end of in order to ease the financial burden on the team. The current rules takes the salary of a player 36 or older and applies it to previous seasons’ salary caps—in essence, forcing the team to pay for those over 36 years before they occur. The new CBA, however, will turn “Over 36” contracts into “Over 38” contracts, allowing teams to sign older players to longer deals.
- The current “one and done” rule allowing college players to declare for the NBA Draft once they’ve completed a year of college or have been out of high school for a year, will remain in place. The league has sought to increase the age limit to 20; the union has resisted that and would prefer no limit or a rule similar to that of Major League Baseball. MLB allows high school players to declare for its draft but prohibits players who opt to attend college from declaring until after their junior year in college. The union sought a so-called “zero and two” compromise that would allow high schoolers in the NBA Draft but keep college players from declaring until after their sophomore season in college.