The NBA has revealed a slightly reduced salary cap projection for the 2020-21 campaign, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reports. The new projected salary cap for next season is now $115M down from $116M.
The downgraded projection comes after a year of relative turmoil for the league, one that began with a diplomatic crisis in China following a tweet from Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey supporting protestors in Hong Kong.
Much of the NBA’s revenue is generated in China, so when the country took offense to Morey’s tweet and revenue sources started getting impacted, the league’s overall revenue picture started to change.
The salary cap, of course, is tied directly to basketball related income.
All things considered, however, despite an unprecedented rift in the NBA-China relationship and supposedly sluggish TV ratings, a $1M drop in the projected cap figure isn’t a tough pill to swallow.
The salary cap still figures to increase from the $109M mark in place for the 2019-20 campaign, so teams expecting additional breathing room next year will still get most of what they had been planning for.
The new luxury tax projection for next season has been similarly scaled back to $139M.
With a relatively weak free agency class in the pipeline for the summer of 2020, the reduced numbers aren’t significant game changers for teams at or below the salary cap. The reduced luxury tax mark, however, could make life more difficult for teams struggling to limbo under the threshold.
In an article about the changing salary cap figures, Wojnarowski and Bobby Marks discussed the implications this could have on teams expected to be close to the tax, as well as players whose upcoming contracts are tethered to next year’s cap.
