NBA Commissioner Adam Silver speaks to the media during a press conference during All-Star Week 2022 at Rocket Mortgage Fieldhouse on February 19, 2022 in Cleveland, Ohio.
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The NBA will have labor peace for many years to come.
The league and its players reached an agreement early Saturday on a new seven-year collective bargaining agreement, the NBA announced. It is still awaiting ratification, though that process is almost certainly nothing more than a formality.
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The deal will begin this summer and will run through at least the end of the 2028-29 season. Either party can then opt out; otherwise, it will last until the end of 2029-30.
Among the details, according to a person familiar with the negotiations who spoke to the Associated Press: the in-season tournament that Commissioner Adam Silver has wanted for years will become a reality and players will have to appear. present in at least 65 matches to be entered. qualify for top individual awards such as Best Player. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because neither the league nor the National Basketball Players Association has made specifics public.
Another new part of the CBA will be a second luxury tax that, when achieved, will prevent teams from using their mid-tier exceptions to sign players. It’s an obvious compromise, considering that some teams want a so-called “higher spending cap” that would essentially set an absolute cap on what can be spent each season and help level the playing field between teams willing to pay a lot. tax bills and those who don’t.
Not in the CBA is a change to the policy allowing high school players to participate in the NBA draft. It’s been discussed and on the agenda for months, but it won’t change anytime soon—perhaps at least during the next CBA term.
“We also appreciate that there are a lot of benefits to actually having veterans who can bring in those 18-year-olds,” NBPA chief executive Tamika Tremaglio said in February during a press conference. of the NBPA at the All-Star weekend. “And so certainly anything that we’re even going to look at, to be honest, will have to include a component that allows veterans to participate as well.”
Silver said Wednesday, at the conclusion of a two-day Board of Governors meeting, that he hoped to reach an agreement by the end of the week. He also said there had been no consideration – at least on the part of the federation – of postponing the third opt-out date.
The current CBA, effective July 1, 2017, comes with a general option for the NBA or NBPA to opt out after six seasons — June 30 of this year. Initially, the parties had a deadline of December 15 to notify their intention to exercise the refusal, then pushed back the deadline to February 8, then to Friday.
The federation and union continued to talk after the midnight opt-out deadline passed and an agreement was announced nearly three hours later.
The deal doesn’t end the process, although it’s clearly a big step forward.
Owners will have to vote on what negotiators have come up with, and players will also have to vote to approve the deal. Then there’s the actual writing of the document — the most recent CBA signed up with about 600 pages containing almost 5,000 paragraphs and 200,000 words. Much will be the same; much of it will need modification.
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