A few weeks ago, the NBA announced the “salary cap” for the 2022/23 season. The latter thus went from 112.4 to 123.7 million dollars, or a 10% increase. An increase regulated by the NBA. Same outbreak for “luxury tax”now set at 150.3 million, compared to 136.6 the previous year.
A little more than a year before the 2023/24 season, the league communicated to the franchises new projections for that season, ESPN tells us.
The authorized payroll should thus be set at 134 million and the luxury tax at 162 million dollars. These are respectively 8.4 and 7.8% increase!
To realize the explosion of the salary cap lately, despite the pandemic and the complicated seasons because of the Covid-19, it suffices to compare with the previous years. In 2019, only three years ago, the salary cap was set at $109 million. And two years earlier, it was still below 100 million (99).
If it is indeed at 134 million dollars in 2023/2024, it will therefore have experienced an increase of almost 35% in seven years…
– salary cap : this is the payroll defined by the NBA. NBA franchises have the ability to override it when extending their own players or through “exceptions.”
– luxury tax : in the NBA, the salary cap is not strict, and the NBA authorizes the richest franchises to exceed the threshold set with a tolerance margin of approximately 20%. Then, for every dollar spent above this cap, franchises must pay the “luxury tax” to the NBA. A kind of tax that can be very expensive, and candidates for the title usually pay tens of millions of dollars each year. A sum then paid back to the franchises, good students, who did not pay the “luxury tax”.
