NBA’s New CBA Ratified: Free Agent Signings Start Tuesday

The NBA and NBPA have signed and ratified a new six-year CBA and the NBA free-agent signing period will begin tomorrow at noon ET, according to Michael Lee of the WASHINGTON POST. The ’05-06 salary cap will be $49.5M — up from $43.8M the past two seasons — and teams for the first time “will know the luxury tax threshold before the season.” Previously, teams were informed after the season ended. Teams with payrolls over $61.7M will have to pay the dollar-for-dollar luxury tax. The CBA also includes a one-time amnesty clause that allows teams to cut one player from their rosters to avoid paying the tax (WASHINGTON POST, 7/31). In Boston, Peter May noted the salary of a player released under the amnesty clause still counts against the team’s salary cap (BOSTON GLOBE, 7/31). In San Antonio, Mike Monroe wrote, “There are teams that have held the line on player payments that are more than a little upset about the amnesty clause — and for good reason. It makes sense only for those teams above the luxury-tax threshold, which means it rewards only those teams that violated the spirit of the old [CBA] by relieving them of financial burden they knew they were taking on. ... In a real way, it punishes those teams that remained below the threshold by reducing future shares of the luxury-tax redistribution” (SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS, 7/31).