Players will cash in under new salary cap
Plenty of money to go around as ceiling rises to $94 million, writes Ryan Wolstat.
There has never been an NBA salary cap boom like the one that is about to be upon us.
Prepare to be stunned, confused, maybe even angry by the sheer dollars thrown around. Every contract is going to look like a bad one and many players will get two to three times more than they would have in previous years. You will have difficulty wrapping your head around these deals.
Welcome to the new NBA, where the salary cap leaps to $94 million US for 2016-17 from $70 million last season and about $58 million from 2010-14.
For 2017-18, it is projected to jump again to $107 million, more than double the amount a decade ago. Thank a monster television and media rights deal for these unprecedented leaps. Down the line, with so much cable cutting going on, there might be a massive correction, but for the next few years at least, this will be the new reality.
Negotiations can begin at 12:01 a.m. on July 1, and this year, the league and players’ union agreed to cut down the moratorium period where salary cap minutiae is worked out, so deals can become official at 12:01 on July 7.
For the Raptors, DeMar DeRozan could get up to $153 over five years from Canada’s only basketball franchise, $114 million over four from anybody else (again, because teams can only offer 4.5 per cent raises each season vs. 7.5 per cent from the player’s existing team).
Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri hedged last month when asked if he would offer DeRozan the full max. A compromise might look like $27 million flat for five years ($135 million total), which would still give the twotime all-star a huge payday, while allowing Toronto to maintain some flexibility.
Only three teams project to have less cap room than the Raptors and a whopping 13 could have at least $40 million to spend, so improving on the team’s run to the Eastern Conference final will be difficult.
With DeRozan’s cap hold (about $15 million) and a small one for European player Nando De Colo that the team wants to hold on to, at least for now, Toronto’s total is about $89 million, which only leaves about $5 million for Bismack Biyombo (they do not have his “Bird Rights,” so can’t go over the cap to bring him back like they can with DeRozan) or another addition.
Trading Terrence Ross for draft picks and space would give the Raptors about $15 million in room, but would make the team’s already glaring lack of shooting an even bigger problem.
Basically, unless the Raptors can add another all-star while bringing back DeRozan, jettisoning Ross and/or Patrick Patterson doesn’t make much sense.
With so many teams boasting tens of millions of dollars in cap space though, making improvements armed only with the midlevel exception will be extremely difficult.