NBA announces 2019-20 and 2020-21 salary cap and luxury tax levels

The NBA released 2019-20 and 2020-21 salary cap threshold and luxury tax levels. The second set of numbers are slightly higher than the June report.

The National Basketball Association reached out to teams to confirm the projected salary cap and point where luxury tax will kick in. For the 2019-20 NBA season those markers are $109 million with a luxury tax of $132 million.

In addition the numbers currently projected for the 2020-21 season were also passed along. The salary cap is reported to be $118 million with the luxury tax reportedly be fixed at $143 million.

Shams Charania of the Athletic posted the information on social media via his tweet:

While the above tweet effects the next two seasons the tweet which bears more consideration was his second. This tweet points out the variance of the new numbers versus the original (June) reported benchmarks. At that time the numbers were reported to be $101.8 million and $123.7 for salary cap and luxury tax level respectively.

Basically the numbers for 2019-2020 remain set at the same level, however it’s the projections for 2020-21 which see a spike. Again as per Charania the new report projects a 1.5 percent jump or an increase of $2 million dollars.

As noted the BRI projections refers to Basketball Related Income and projected shortfall based adjustments

Although an increase of $2 million dollars may seem insignificant that’s an entire contract for teams. And, at season end there is a reason why squads cut smaller contracted players. Those small vet minimum contracts can be the difference in a team coming under the luxury tax. It does often quite literally come down to minor dollars and cents.

Since the next Collective Bargaining Agreement won’t see alterations until 2024 this is the standard to which teams will work to.