The NBA’s most profitable period will continue for at least six more years, thanks to a tentative deal between the league and its players on a new Collective Bargaining deal that will take effect this summer.

It took more than a year of bargaining, with the intensity and expectation increasing in recent days, and the handshake agreement was reached in the early hours of Saturday morning — shortly after the league intended to notify the NBAPA of its intention to opt out of the current CBA on June 30.

Instead, an agreement was reached, at least in theory. “The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association have reached a tentative agreement on a new Collective Bargaining Agreement, which is subject to ratification by players and team governors,” the league said shortly before 3 a.m. Eastern.

Technically, it will be a seven-year agreement, but either party can opt out a year early, meaning labor peace will last only until the 2028-29 season. It will also usher in the age of an in-season tournament, which Commissioner Adam Silver has long desired.

Teams will be issued an 80-game schedule for next season in August unless something changes. Among those 80 games will be four “tournament” games that will score in regular-season standings. All teams will ultimately have two more games added to their schedule to complete the full 82-game slate; the two teams that reach the tournament final will play an 83rd game that will not count in the standings.

The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association have reached a tentative agreement.

According to a person familiar with the negotiations who spoke to The Associated Press, among other details:

• Players will generally have to appear in at least 65 games to be eligible for top individual awards such as Most Valuable Player.
• The maximum value of contract extensions will increase.
• Teams will now have access to a third two-way contract, potentially increasing roster sizes from 17 to 18.

The individual spoke anonymously because neither the league nor the National Basketball Players Association made any public statements.

Once achieved, a second luxury tax level will prevent teams from using their midlevel exception to sign players, according to the CBA. Given how some teams wanted the so-called “upper spending limit,” which would have essentially installed an absolute ceiling on what can be spent each season and helped balance the playing field between teams willing to pay massive tax bills — such as the reigning NBA champion Golden State Warriors — and those who aren’t, that was a clear compromise.

“Once again, the players fail… “Teams in the middle and lower tiers don’t spend because they don’t want to,” Golden State’s Draymond Green said on Twitter. “They want to fail. To increase their spending power to grow it. They keep removing the center. And this is why we hurried into a deal?”

CJ McCollum, a guard for the New Orleans Pelicans, said he welcomes feedback from all players but added, “You can’t make everyone happy.” That is not feasible.

“You have to be able to do what’s best for the collective,” McCollum said following the Pelicans’ victory over the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday night. “There are 450 players and 450 different points of view, including mine.”… It comes down to having a happy medium in certain areas.”

The new CBA will not reinstate the policy that allowed high school players to join the NBA draft.

The new CBA will not reinstate the policy that allowed high school players to join the NBA draft. It’s been discussed and on the agenda for months, but the regulation isn’t going away anytime soon — at least not for the next CBA.

“We also appreciate that there is a lot of benefit to having veterans who can bring those 18-year-olds along,” NBPA executive director Tamika Tremaglio said during an NBPA news conference during All-Star weekend in February. “And so, to be quite honest, anything that we would even consider would have to include a component that would allow veterans to be a part of it as well.”

Silver stated after a Wednesday two-day Board of Governors meeting that he was optimistic about reaching an agreement by the weekend — a clear positive sign. The current CBA, which went into effect on July 1, 2017, included a mutual choice for either the NBA or the NBPA to opt out after six seasons or on June 30, 2018.

The agreement reached on Saturday does not end the process, but it is a significant move forward.

The owners must decide what the negotiators have hammered out, and the players must vote to accept the deal. The document is then written — the most current CBA/NBA was around 600 pages long, with nearly 5,000 paragraphs and 200,000 words. Much of it will be the same, and much of it will need to be revised.

And, even though these talks lasted more than a year, this is the second straight CBA that has been negotiated without the dysfunction that preceded the talks in 2011 — when the league ended up locking out players for 161 days and had to shorten the 2011-12 season from 82 to 66 games.

There was no appetite for a strike, not after the NBA’s revenue surpassed $10 billion for the first time and basketball-related income surpassed $8.9 billion, another milestone. According to Silver, the NBA is on track to sell out more games than ever before this season.

SOURCE – (AP)