The NBA salary cap is the limit to the total amount of money that National Basketball Association teams are allowed to pay their players. It is defined by the league's collective bargaining agreement (CBA). This limit is subject to a complex system of rules and exceptions and as such is considered a "soft" cap.
The actual amount of the salary cap varies on a year-to-year basis, and is calculated as a percentage of the league's revenue from the previous season; for instance, in 2007–08, the NBA's salary cap was approximately US$55.6 million per team, and for the 2008–09 season it was $58.68 million. Like many professional sports leagues, the NBA has a salary cap to control cost. The salary cap for the 2010–2011 and 2011-2012 seasons was $58.044 million. Under the league's new CBA that was ratified in December 2011, ending the 2011 lockout, the cap will remain at its 2010–11 level for the 2011–12 season (though prorated for the shortened season), and will continue to vary based on league revenues.
Read more about NBA Salary Cap: History, Soft Versus Hard Caps, Maximum Individual Contracts Under The CBA, Exceptions, Free Agency, Rookie Scale Salary, Options, Sign and Trade Agreements, Trading and The Salary Cap, Waivers, Released Players, Amnesty Clause
Famous quotes containing the words salary cap, salary and/or cap:
“The salary cap ... will be accepted about the time the 13 original states restore the monarchy.”
—Tom Reich, U.S. baseball agent. New York Times, p. 16B (August 11, 1994)
“Social and scientific progress are assured, sir, once our great system of postpossession payments is in operation, not the installment plan, no sir, but a system of small postpossession payments that clinch the investment. No possible rational human wish unfulfilled. A man with a salary of fifty dollars a week can start payments on a Rolls-Royce, the Waldorf-Astoria, or a troupe of trained seals if he so desires.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“‘I have cap and bells,’ he pondered,
‘I will send them to her and die’;
And when the morning whitened
He left them where she went by.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)