(Originally published on June 28, the author is Zach Harper, a writer for The Athletic. The content of the article does not represent the views of the translator.)
It’s that time of year again when the NBA world is turned upside down. This Thursday, the NBA free market will officially open, and we are about to see a series of operations by various teams. Some of them will be free agent signings, some of them will be trades, and some of them will be sign-and-trades. This year's free-agent slate isn't as impressive as past years, but it still has the potential to cause chaos. The
free market can be confusing and a mess, so you may need some clarification. As I did with the NBA Draft Lottery and the NBA Draft, I'm going to list some questions you might ask and provide answers. It's like I'm pretending to be working when I'm talking to myself. (That’s what happens when you’ve been working from home for 13 years and you feel weird talking to the family dog all the time.)
Now, let’s answer some compiled questions!
1. So, what is free agency? The
dictionary defines "free agent" as "an athlete who is not bound by a contract and is therefore eligible to join any team." That sounds pretty accurate. Basically, all players have contracts, and the NBA's collective bargaining agreement limits the length of these contracts.
However, this is not always the case. For example: Magic Johnson signed a 25-year, $25 million long-term contract with the Los Angeles Lakers as a player. This contract was supposed to expire in 2009. (It also would have quickly become too cheap during the life of the contract, but that's not the point of our discussion today.) In 2022, NBA free agents can sign for the minimum one-year period if they re-sign with their teams. Contracts of up to five years. And if they want to leave the team, they can sign a contract with a maximum duration of four years.
A player's contract amount ranges from a base salary (which can range from just over $1 million to over $2.8 million, depending on the length of a player's career) to a maximum salary. For players who have been in the league for six years or less, the first year of a max contract is 25% of the salary cap — which for this year is $30.5 million. For players who have been in the league for seven to nine years, the first year of a max contract is 30% of the salary cap (estimated at $36.6 million). For players who have been in the league for ten years or more, the first year of a max contract is 35% of the salary cap (estimated at $42.7 million).
NBA players can also sign contracts for any amount between the minimum salary and the maximum salary. Another note: If a player signs a new contract with his current team, his salary can increase by up to 8% each year based on the previous season; but if he signs a new contract with a new team , then the annual salary increase can only be 5% at most.
2. So when will the free market start?
As per the rules - and I am not tired of emphasizing the phrase "as per the rules" - it starts at 6pm on June 30th. Until then, no free agent signings or trades, I repeat, any free agent signings or trades, are allowed to occur. We’ll talk more about this later.
3. How can I watch Free Market?
You can't watch it. But it can observe you. Strictly speaking, NBA free agency is not a TV show, although it sometimes feels like it. You can check out related news on Twitter and The Athletic’s free agency live blog. You'll want to make sure you change your Twitter notification settings so you can stay updated on breaking news from Shams Charania, Sam Amick, and all your favorite NBA reporters. Immediately afterwards, you can quickly log on to Twitter and post a message saying that a certain contract is not worth it (or it is too worth it, or a certain deal is great, or all three).Then you can wait for some guy whose username is his/her name plus 10 digits to comment on you with a "clown" emoji, asserting that you don't watch games at all, and hoping that you don't see him/her paying attention. of professional and college sports player/team accounts.
4. Okay, so any free agent can sign with any team, right?
is correct, but not all are correct. A team can't throw an arbitrary amount of cash at a bunch of free agents and sign them all. No matter how many pictures of Lakers and Knicks fans post on the Internet, they cannot all come true.
The NBA has a soft salary cap. It means there is a cap on how much each team can pay players, unless they are signing new contracts with players already on their roster. In this case, there is no problem even if the team's player salary expenditure after signing them exceeds the soft salary cap. Finally, there is a luxury tax line that is much higher than the soft salary cap. If it goes over that, teams have to spend more money as punishment for already spending so much money.
If a team does not have enough salary space left under the soft salary cap to sign a new player, it must use some of the possible salary cap exceptions (midlevel exception, biennial exception, etc.) to accomplish this. Sign a contract. Depending on how much the team has spent on player salaries, the exceptions it can use are different. This often means for incoming players that they will be paid less than they expected. The amount of these exceptions is also determined by multiplying the total salary cap level and player salary level by a fixed percentage.
As an example, let's assume the Nets Irving does not exercise his $37 million player option for the 2022-23 season. Let's assume he wants to sign with the New Orleans Pelicans or Los Angeles Lakers. Because the Lakers' entire team salary has exceeded the luxury tax line, the mid-level exception contract they can use next season is about $6 million. This is the largest contract the Lakers can offer Irving, no matter how long it is. On the other hand, the Pelicans are not a team that has to pay the luxury tax, but their total player salary is also above the salary cap. The mid-level exception contract they can offer Irving next season is about $10 million. Both options are a far cry from $37 million. No wonder Irving chose to exercise his player option. In addition to these complex and rare exceptions, teams that exceed the salary cap can only sign new players with minimum salary contracts.
Teams whose player salaries are below the soft salary cap can use their remaining salary space to sign new players as much as possible, as long as the contract value does not exceed the maximum salary. On the player side, unrestricted free agents can theoretically sign with any team. But restricted free agents have a separate set of rules if they want to leave their team.
5. Wait, some free agents are not free? Please explain.
Restricted free agency is such a bummer sometimes! With some rare exceptions, those drafted in the first round will become restricted free agents after completing their rookie contracts. Their rookie contracts last four years and are based on their first-round draft pick. Teams can then make a "qualifying offer" to retain the rights to sign these free agents. (The amount of the qualifying offer is determined by the salary increase specified in the contract and the proportion of the salary cap allocated to the rookie.)
If a team makes a qualifying offer to a player, that player becomes a restricted free agent. . He can choose to negotiate a new contract with his current team, sign an invitation-only contract with a new team, or become an unrestricted free agent next offseason after accepting a one-year qualifying offer. players. A player who makes the last option would become an unrestricted free agent much faster, but would risk injury -- something that would affect his future salary. If a player signs an invitation contract with a new team, his team has two days to decide whether to match the contract.Once this invitation contract is matched, the player has no choice but to stay. But if it is not matched, the player can play with the new team according to the offer of the invitation contract. The only way to avoid this two-day waiting period is for the two teams to reach a sign-and-trade agreement before the player signs an invitation contract.
For example, assume that 2022 popular restricted free agent Ayton signs a max invitation contract with the Detroit Pistons. Technically, the Phoenix Suns will have two days to decide whether the offer is too expensive for Robert Sarver (Annotation: Suns owner). If the Suns match the offer, Ayton will have to stay, although he may be bitter about the way he ended the season. But at least this way he can get the max contract extension the Suns refused to offer him last offseason. If the Suns don't match the offer, Ayton could play next to Cade Cunningham and Jaden Ivey for the next four years.
6. This may be a stupid question, but can an unrestricted free agent sign with any team?
Yes, that’s right. It's just a matter of how much money those teams are willing to offer them, and how much salary they're willing to take in a loss if they go to a team whose player payroll exceeds the salary cap. You can sign with any team that wants to sign you, but you won't necessarily get the salary you want. Contracts always have to comply with salary caps, or exception clauses or other rules.
7. Who determines players' salaries?
As mentioned before, base salary contracts, exception clauses and maximum salary contracts are all set according to a certain proportion of the league's salary cap. The salary cap is determined based on the league's total basketball-related revenue last season. On this basis, the team's managers and front office will negotiate with the players or their agents/agents. Some people believe that James is in both groups, but he is not. At least, I'm personally pretty sure he doesn't...
8. Will these negotiations begin on Thursday?
Here's an interesting and somewhat dirty semi-open secret about free agency: These deals and signings are often negotiated and finalized weeks or even months in advance. But the league doesn't want people to know that these talks are taking place so early because, according to the rules, a team is not allowed to negotiate with players from other teams unless they have officially become free agents. This kind of advance negotiation is called illegal recruitment, and illegal recruitment is wrong.
One of the official penalties for recruiting violations is for the team to lose future draft picks, which is what happened to Milwaukee and Miami, who were deprived of their second-round picks this season. In theory, if an under-the-table agreement is reached improperly or recruitment is over-recruited, a signed contract could be declared void. But the league rarely mandates such penalties. why? Think about it, if you were the police, would you stop every car that was just a few miles per hour over the speed limit?
Some agreements were reached soon after the opening of the free market, but the parties to the agreement did not communicate rapidly during that time period. In fact, most negotiations related to that agreement began well before June 30. But not all deals were fully concluded when the free market first opened—not even most deals. Sometimes, their creation depends on the signing of other players. The free market is like this: one domino falls, and then a series of dominoes fall because of it.
9. You mentioned sign before exchange. Could you please explain it to me? The formation of the noun
explains itself to a certain extent. The rules mentioned above govern how teams sign players? If a free agent's team can engineer a deal in which they sign him first and then trade him to a new team for something in return, those rules can be bypassed.A sign-and-trade involving such a free agent must either keep his new team's player payroll under the salary cap, or bring back some players from the new team for his old team. If both teams exceed the salary cap, the total contracts of other players involved in the process must be between 125% and 175% of the free agent's new contract amount, just like any trade. .
For example: Suppose Jaylen Brunson wants to leave the Dallas Mavericks and go to the New York Knicks. Assume that the Knicks are unable to create the cap space to sign Brunson because they paid Evan Fournier $17 million of his four-year contract last season. Then, Mavericks can still reach a sign-and-trade deal with the Knicks, with the Mavericks sending Brunson, and the Knicks sending players and/or draft picks to Dallas , as long as the latter sends the total assets Just make the necessary space for Brunson's new contract.
By the way, do you remember the NBA has a soft salary cap? Once a team acquires a player through a sign-and-trade, the soft salary cap becomes a hard salary cap. Sounds a little confusing, right? Indeed. But really all you need to know is this: If a team completes a sign-and-trade, it will receive a hard salary cap amount equal to the luxury tax line plus a few million dollars. No matter what method is used, the player salary expenditure of this team cannot exceed the amount corresponding to this hard salary cap.
10. What are these “bird rights” I keep hearing about?
Remember Larry Bird ? His performance is amazing, right? Go check out his highlights online. This man is incredible. When the NBA instituted a salary cap system in 1983, Bird happened to be a free agent soon. This means the Boston Celtics may have a hard time retaining their own superstar. So to help, the league introduced a rule called the "qualified veteran free agent exception."
Now we call this rule "bird rights". It has nothing to do with "bird laws," despite what Charlie Kelly might tell you. Role). Bird Rights means you can re-sign players from your own team over the salary cap, but there are other stipulations. When a player plays for a team for three consecutive seasons without leaving as a free agent, the team owns the player's Bird Rights outright. Being traded midway will have no impact here. In this case, the team can re-sign him to a maximum salary contract.
In addition, there is "early bird rights" for players who have only stayed with one team for two consecutive seasons. This means that they can re-sign with the team to a new contract with a salary equal to 175% of the previous salary, or a new contract with a salary of 104.5% of the league average salary - whichever is higher. . In this way, players with minimum salary will not suffer. "Non-Bird rights" apply to players who have only been with one team for one year. You can offer those players new contracts at 120% of their previous salary.
11. Who are the favorites in restricted and unrestricted free agency?
I will list some potential unrestricted free agents and restricted free agents.
Some important players who may become unrestricted free agents:
- Bill , Washington Wizards
- LaVine , Chicago Bulls
- Jalen Brunson, Dallas Mavericks
- Chris Boucher , Toronto Raptors
- Kyle Anderson,Memphis Grizzlies
- Bruce Brown,Brooklyn Nets
Some important players who may become restricted free agents:
- Ayton, Phoenix Suns
- Myles Bridges, Charlotte Hornets
- Anfernee Simons , Portland Trail Blazers
- Mitchell Robinson , New York Knicks
- Dante DiVincenzo, Sacramento Kings
If you think I am because If you're biased and hate certain players and your home team so you don't list them, you're 100% right. John Hollinger has a great detailed list of free agents.
2. Will those players change teams? Some of them are! Many expected the Knicks to pursue Brunson feverishly. Ayton is not expected to stay in Phoenix, but there’s no telling. Miles Bridges removed the Hornets' official team account from his social media following list, which means... well I'll never be sure what that means. He might stay on the team! Or maybe not!
Beal and LaVine are expected to sign five-year max contracts with their respective teams. As for the rest of the list, only God knows!
13. Would the free market be exciting?
Let's hope so!
This year is different from previous years in that there are not a lot of free agents that can change the league, but we can see some trades that can change certain teams. That's the beauty of the free market. Anything can happen!
As long as it is strictly in compliance with the labor agreement.
Original text: Zach Harper
Compilation: Asteroid Fall
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