Some Lesser-Known Provisions In The New NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement

With precisely two days left to go until the beginning of free agency, the NBA Player’s Association finally published the new Collective Bargaining Agreement on Wednesday afternoon. The broad terms of the agreement were finalised some weeks ago, yet any 676-page document written in legalese needs plenty of billable hours logged to go through it with a toothcomb, even if doing so gives the players, agents and teams whose conduct it legislates absolutely minimal time to toothcomb it themselves.

At the time of the agreement’s announcement, a term sheet was distributed that summarised the major changes that would be forthcoming. Those include the new dual-layered “apron” (a vehicle designed to prohibit excessive spending by one team), the creation of a new exception specifically for second-round draft picks, and the removal of testing for marijuana. The fact that even the summary document is nine pages long speaks to how much has changed.

In a full 676-page document, though, even a nine-pager lacks for adequate detail. From my own ongoing toothcombing of the new 2023 NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement, here are some of the lesser-reported (or hitherto entirely unreported) changes.

• The definition of “regular season” now expressly excludes the Play-In tournament. As the Play-In tournament was a creation made between Collective Bargaining Agreements, it did not feature in the previous version (dated 2017), and thus there is no reference to it. It was therefore unclear and a matter of debate in the public realm as to whether the Play-In tournament should count as part of the regular season or not. But this has now been clarified; in the opening Article I of the 2023 CBA, though – which defines terms used throughout the document – “regular season” is defined as:

“the period beginning on the first day and ending on the last day of regularly scheduled (as opposed to Exhibition, Play-In, or playoff) competition between NBA Teams.”

• The deadline by which second-round draft picks have to sign their tenders – the contract offer required by teams in order to maintain draft rights on the player – is now the earlier of a) four days before opening night, or (b) 15th October. Previously, the latter date was the deadline.
• The “Maximum Advance Amount” that players can receive upfront is still equal to the lesser of either 80% of the player’s guaranteed salary or 50% of his base salary, but the date for payment of that advance has been moved up from 15th November to 1st November.
• References to “owners” have been changed to “team owners”. Since the last CBA, a discussion has been taking place both in the public sphere and within the NBA itself about use of the term “owner”, and what it can connote. A sport with a Black-majority playing personnel on teams that have been historically owned and run by white people is making a change to avoid using the historical language of slavery.
• The maximum bonus amounts players can receive in Exhibit 10 contracts is rising to $75,000 this upcoming season, and thereafter rising annually with the salary cap. This is a raise from $50,000 previously.
• That aforementioned Exhibit 10 bonus amount now comes with the express caveat that the player must be waived “prior to the first day of the Regular Season”. This was not a problem in practice previously, but is now expressly stated.
• A whole new section establishes that any NBA team looking to sign a player from a different NBA team’s G League affiliate to an Exhibit 10 deal when that player is eligible to rejoin their affiliate as a “returning” player must now expressly put in writing that they can do that. Which looks like something that should come with an origin story attached. (But does not.)

• The “Higher Max Criteria” for fifth-year players – a dispensation added in the 2017 CBA to grant teams the ability to sign their star young players coming off their rookie deals to bigger second contracts – have changed. Under the 2023 CBA, a player must make any All-NBA team or win the Defensive Player of the Year award in the previous season (or in two of the previous three) to be eligible for a maximum salary beginning at 30% of the cap max salary. They need only be MVP once, but it must be during the previous seasons. Previously, the player had to make an All-NBA team or win DPOY twice in the previous four seasons, or win MVP at any point, while the previous two-time All-Star starter criterion is eliminated altogether.
• Higher Max Criteria have also been standardised; there will therefore no longer be two different thresholds for fifth-year players getting bigger maximum salaries in extensions, and eight/nine-year veterans getting bigger maxes. They have the same criteria. This simplifies an often-confused series of similar but slightly differing rules and terminologies.
• If $500,000 or less of guaranteed salary remains at the time a player is waived, the player’s remaining guaranteed salary continues to be paid according to the contract’s original payment schedule. This is up from $250,000 in the last CBA.
• How salaries that exceed the maximum (i.e. were signed prior to the salary cap declining) are handled when new maxes are determined each mortarium has been changed and made far less simple. There is however no easy way to explain those changes are explainable in tweets, so here’s the screenshots (A = old CBA, B/C = new one)

• So as to dilute the above word-heavy legalese with something more palatable and understandable; NBA player’s daily meal expense allowance has risen to $156 a day for the upcoming season under this new CBA, with all changes in future seasons tied to the consumer price index. This is an increase from $129 in the 2017 CBA.

Future posts will contain more new NBA CBA provisions as they become available.