Some More New Parts Of 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 is the second post in a series that documents some of the lesser-reported (or hitherto entirely unreported) changes. (Click here for part one.)

• “[L]ive social media Q&A sessions with fans conducted by the Team
  TISI
  ” now count towards a player’s promotional appearance total. NBA players are obliged to do 12 promotional appearances each salary cap year, of which seven must be individual appearances. This amount is unchanged – as is the amount players get paid for each one; $3,500 – yet the definition of what can count as a promotional appearance has been expanded to include these Q&As, as well as “player-focused content sessions” (without expanding on what those might be).
• A completely new provision states that: “Upon request by the NBA or the Team, a player that is in attendance but not dressed for or able to play in a game shall participate in an in-game interview from the Team bench. No player, without his consent, may be required to participate in more than one per week.”
• Whereas in the 2017 CBA, the rule was that 10-day contracts could not pay less than the minimum salary, in this new one, “not pay less than” is replaced by “must pay”. In practice, this changes nothing, as all 10-dayers were always for the minimum salary, but this does now prevent the hypothetical situation in which a player signs a 10-day maximum salary contract. “You are invaluable to our franchise but only for a week and a bit” would be quite the mixed message.
• Some new rules regarding 10-day contracts have been established. Firstly, in the event that the NBA authorizes a team to sign an extra player under the NBA’s hardship rules, that contract will be a 10-day contract, regardless of at what point in the season it is signed (10-dayers are usually only signable after 5th January, whereas hardship cases can of course occur at any time).
• Secondly, if such a 10-day hardship contract extends up to or past the date of the team’s last regular season game, the term of that contract will be the number of days remaining in the regular season (including the day on which it is signed). Remember from the previous post that “regular season” does not include the Play-In tournament, and that this is a provision for hardship 10-day deals only; regular 10-dayers already could not extend beyond the end of the season)
• Thirdly, if a 10-day contract is terminated early, the team and player cannot agree on a new one until the expiration date of the original one has passed. Again, it is unclear that this has ever happened or that it ever would, but it closes a (potentially inconsequential) loophole.
• Two-way contracts, one of the big inventions of the 2017 CBA, have also seen some modification. The most obvious change; teams can now have up to three two-way players on their roster instead of two.
• No two-way player can be active for more than 50 games during the regular season, up from 45 in the last CBA. (This rule had already been adjusted upwards to 50 from the 2020-21 season as a result of the changes enforced by the pandemic, but is now codified as such going forwards.)
• Similarly, codifying into the CBA another change that had already happened in practice, the salary paid to players in two-way contracts has been greatly simplified. Where once they were paid a complicated amount based on how much time they spent in each league, two-way players are now to be paid half the rookie minimum, irrespective of how much experience the player has (i.e second-, third- or fourth-year players on two-way deals still get that same amount).
• The deadline for signing players to new two-way deals has moved from 15th January to 4th March.
• The “Under-Fifteen” game is a new thing:

• In a new wrinkle concerning two-way contract eligibility, if a fifth-year player missed one of his first four seasons (i.e. he was on the roster all year, but never took the court), his contract can be converted to a one-year two-way deal, an exception to the “no more than three years of experience” rule. This may of use to players such as Dylan Windler.

• When converting two-ways to standard contracts, the NBA deals expressly now cannot contain an Exhibit 10. Although I do not know of any that ever did.
• The maximum allowable bonus percentage in standard deals has increased from 15% to 20%.
• Players must be paid at least 10% of their base compensation on regular league paydays (down from 20% under the previous CBA)
• This section is completely new, states that the play-in games do not count in bonus calculations, and also provides the first mention of the In-Season Tournament (“IST Finals”).

• The moratorium section was entirely rewritten, with the following changes: extensions can now be negotiated in the moratorium, and the new second-rounder exception can be used during the moratorium.
• The amount of housing costs (be it rent or mortgage) that a team can reimburse a player it acquired in trade has risen to $6,000 a month for three months, up from $4,500.
• Regarding suspensions, all this section is new:

• Additionally, any player who “fails or refuses, without proper and reasonable cause or excuse, to render the services required by a Player Contract or this agreement” now loses 1/91.6th of their base salary for each missed game. Other suspensions still lose 1/145th as before.
• The definition of “Team Awareness Meetings” has expanded to include “healthy relationships, mental health and wellness programming, and recommendations and educational materials regarding the health benefits of vaccinations recommended by the CDC”. Anyone’s guess as to what might have prompted this.
• “Each Team’s Governor shall attend his or her Team’s annual “business of basketball” program.” This one is included in this piece for the sake of completeness, not because of relevance.
• The fine for players not attending anti-gambling seminars has skyrocketed from $20,000 to $100,000.
• Public trade requests can lead to suspensions or fines of up to $150,000.
• And lastly for this instalment in the series, “passive” player investment in gaming and/or betting companies is allowed, as long as no betting on the NBA or its products is allowed.

Further instalments will followed as more is unearthed.