Salary Cap goes up
Big Chris
Salary Cap Rises to $43.8 Million
Jul 15, 7:22 PM (ET)
By CHRIS SHERIDAN
NEW YORK (AP) - The NBA salary cap for the 2003-04 season will be almost $44
million, a jump of about 9 percent from last season.
The league and the players' union released the new figure Tuesday night on
the eve of the expiration of a moratorium on free agent signings. Their
financial calculations showed the average salary to be $4.917 million, which
will become the starting salary for any free agent signed to the full
mid-level exception.
The new salary cap figure of $43.84 million is the highest in NBA history.
A year ago, the figure dropped from $42.5 million to $40.27 million - the
first drop since the salary cap system was adopted for the 1984-85 season.
The salary cap represents the maximum amount of payroll a team can spend on
player salaries. It is known as a "soft" cap, however, as teams are allowed
to use several exceptions to exceed that figure.
Teams whose payrolls exceeded $52.9 million last season will have to pay a
dollar-for-dollar luxury tax on the overage. All luxury tax money will be
pooled and redistributed to teams below the threshold under a formula to be
determined by the league's Board of Governors.
The players' union said it expected next season's tax threshold to be $57
million.
The cap of $43.84 million will raise the value of maximum salary contracts
agreed to between Jason Kidd and the Nets, and Jermaine O'Neal and the
Pacers.
Kidd is eligible to earn a starting salary equal to 30 percent of the cap,
or $13.152 million. With annual increases of 12.5 percent, his deal will be
worth a total of $103.67 million - an increase of more than $5 million from
previously reported figures.
The cap has increased by an average of 8.5 percent during the current
collective bargaining agreement, rising from $26.9 million in 1997-98 to the
current level.
The 2003-04 minimum team salary, set at 75 percent of the salary cap, will
be $32,880,000.
Jim Welters
rave...@cablespeed.com wrote on 7/15/03 10:17 PM:
> I'm not sure if i truely understand the salary cap and luxury tax thing. Is
> it true that a percentage of income from basketball operations from all nba
> teams is pooled and distributed to the players as a form of profit sharing?
If the total player salaries are below a certain amount. Otherwise the
players kick in money from a withholding of their own (10% of their
salaries.)
>
> And is it true that on nba teams that are losing money there is no "per
> capita" figure scaling the monies so that non-money making franchises
> players get less than their successful counterparts?
No. The money that is distributed is based on the luxury tax. Teams that are
over get nothing, the others split what there is.
>
> And, there is no adjustment of the salary cap awarding money making
> franchises with more money to spend on salaries?
No, but theoretically big money making teams might be more able to tolerate
paying the luxury tax than teams losing money or with a cheap owner.
Larry Coon has a sal cap FAQ, but I don't remember the URL.
Jim Welters
Ron Coscorrosa
<snip>
> Larry Coon has a sal cap FAQ, but I don't remember the URL.
http://members.cox.net/lmcoon/salarycap.htm
Your Personal Google Monkey,
--
Ron Coscorrosa
http://www.cs.pdx.edu/~coscorrr/