The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association agreed in principle early Saturday to a new collective bargaining agreement, the parties said, giving the league a long period of assured labor stability as it heads into a new round of media rights deals on the horizon.
The seven-year agreement—which still needs to be ratified by players and team governors—will go into effect at the start of the 2023-24 season, according to people familiar with the negotiations. It includes a mutual opt-out after its sixth year and includes language to try to both curb the trend of top players missing games and limit the spending of the NBA’s richest teams.
Although there had been speculation that the new CBA would roll back the NBA’s age limit for draft prospects, ending the “one-and-done” era of college basketball, it includes no such changes.
The current agreement is slated to expire following next season, but midnight Friday marked an opt-out by which either side could choose to trim off the last year and let the CBA expire in June of 2023. In a press conference this week, Silver characterized the option as a way of creating pressure to negotiate without going “right up to the line.” The parties agreed to extend the opt-out deadline past midnight to complete the new agreement.
The agreement arrives during a period of flux for both basketball and the means by which the NBA sells itself to the public. One upshot of the emphasis on analytics that now permeates professional sports is that NBA teams rest their star players more than ever, valuing the long-term benefits of injury-risk mitigation over the boosted odds of winning a single game. “The mind-set of our teams and players these days…is that they should be optimizing performance for the playoffs,” Silver said at a press conference in February.
Perhaps the most noteworthy element of the new deal, for fans frustrated by the trend, is language that requires players to appear in at least 65 games to be eligible for awards such as All-NBA teams and Most Valuable Player. It remains to be seen what effect the stipulations will have, as voters for the awards could already factor games missed into their decisions.
A long-rumored in-season tournament could arrive as soon as 2023-24 as well, further boosting the stakes of the season’s dog days. The tournament will come with a monetary prize for players on the winning…
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