National Basketball Association salary cap jumping to higher-than-expected $94 million, report says

The salary cap was originally expected to jump from $70 million this season to $92 million this summer, but it’s going to be even more than that. It was actually a slight improvement from what was expected to be a ceiling of $67 million for the season, so that was a positive.

Shams Charania of The Vertical is reporting that, according to a memo sent by the NBA to its constituent franchises today, the NBA Salary Cap for 2016-17 is projected to reach million, $2 million higher than previously forecast. “But an unanticipated rise in the cap, and as we’ve talked about many times, as a result, a free agency market that will be very hard to predict”. It means that, for example, the Miami Heat can overpay for Hassan Whiteside and be a legit contender for Kevin Durant at the same time. There is no word yet on what the ceiling is going to be regarding the luxury tax, so we’ll fight out later how much a team can go over in their mission to buy a championship.

Players with less than 10 years of service but at least seven years can sign max deals starting at $26.5 million in the first year of the deal with the cap at $94 million. After Darrell Arthur opts out of his deal (and he will) Denver will have just $57.8 million worth of guaranteed contracts on the books.

We knew there was going to be a big increase in money available in the National Basketball Association this summer.

“Arguably a good problem to have”, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said in April of a rising income and cap levels.

The final amount for the salary cap remains ongoing, pending the completion of the 2015-16 BRI audit report on July 6, the National Basketball Association wrote in the memo.