The NBA and the National Basketball Association Players Association have agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement that will ensure peace for workers, the league announced Saturday morning. The new deal must be ratified by the NBA’s players and league’s board of governors before it becomes official.
The deal includes the addition of an in-season tournament with monetary rewards for players and coaches who win it, a 65-game minimum player eligibility for most postseason prizes, removal of marijuana as a prohibited substance, and a second luxury tax class. According to a person familiar with the terms, who requested anonymity because the deal had not been ratified.
The same person said the new collective bargaining agreement would begin next season and run for seven years, with a mutual opt-out clause after six years.
Although some predicted that this collective bargaining agreement would lower the minimum age to enter the NBA draft from 19 to 18, the two sides did not agree to this. The age limit will remain at 19, which means most players who have graduated from high school will need to wait a year before entering the draft.
The league announced the deal in a tweet at 2:59 a.m. Saturday. The parties agreed to extend the midnight deadline for both sides to withdraw from the current agreement, which has been in effect since 2017.
Labor organization and trade unions
- Hollywood writers: Unions representing thousands of TV and film writers said they had overwhelming support for the strike, and have given union leaders the right to call a walkout when their contract expires on May 1.
- Rutgers University: Unions representing nearly 9,000 faculty members at New Jersey’s leading public university suspended a strike that lasted nearly a week after reaching consensus with the school on critical provisions.
- Police Benevolent Association: Patrick J. said: Lynch, president of the New York City Police Officers Union, which has just negotiated a new contract, said he would be leaving the position at the end of his term.
If the two sides don’t agree or come close Friday, Commissioner Adam Silver said, the league intends to exercise the opt-out clause. That would have caused the current collective bargaining agreement to expire on June 30 instead of next year, squeezing the time when both sides would have had to avoid a work stoppage.
The NBA has not gone out of business since the lockout in 2011, delaying the start of that season until Christmas.
The deal is the first negotiated by CEO Tamika Tremaglio, who begins her term as union president in 2021, and for CJ McCollum, a Pelican keeper who became its president in August of that year.
The second tier of luxury taxes appears to be a compromise of what the League wanted. The federation was concerned that some teams were at a huge disadvantage because a small number of them were vastly outperformed by salary cap exceptions within the current luxury tax system. This season, the Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Clippers are paying the highest luxury taxes in the league for their star-studded rosters.
To prevent this spending imbalance, the league hoped to establish a fixed amount that teams could spend on salaries, but the league made it clear early on that it would not accept any hard spending limit for teams.
Adding a championship during the NBA season has always been a priority for the Silver. The championship matches will be included in the 82-match league schedule, and the two teams playing in the championship match will play in 83 matches.
“It’s something I’m still excited about,” Silver said during a press conference in September. “I think it’s still an opportunity within the current footprint of our season to create some meaningful games, games with consequences, during an otherwise long regular season.”
In the past few months, there has been a great deal of discussion about what to do with star players missing matches due to “load management”, a term used to identify a player who may not be injured but needs extra time to recover before playing again. The players argued that they were often pressured by the wary medical staff.
The 65-game minimum for most postseason awards seems geared toward addressing this issue by providing an incentive for top players to play in more games.