NBA Salary Cap Jumping to $94 Million, Lakers Sitting Pretty in Free Agency
The NBA salary cap is jumping to $94 million next season and the Lakers are going to have all of the cap-room in the world
Expecting the NBA salary cap to jump up heading into the 2016-17 season has been more than commonplace ever since the league signed their newest TV deal. The figure that had been tossed around for quite some time had been somewhere very close to $90 million. Now it appears that the cap is going to be even higher than that.
According to a report from Shams Charania of The Vertical, the NBA has informed every team in the league that the salary cap is going to be at $94 million. While that’s still not set in stone until July 6, that’s the figure they’ve done the legwork to figure out right now and the actual number will be closer to that than the original $90 million figure.
Obviously this is great news for the Los Angeles Lakers. The Lakers are expected to be one of the biggest players in free agency this offseason and this latest news gives them even more cap room to work with to try and sign big-name free agents.
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Looking at the books right now according to Spotrac, the Lakers only have just a hair over $26 million in active contracts going into next season. That gives them somewhere in the ballpark of $68 million in cap room to operate with in free agency if they’re trying to make a splash.
If they could lock up two max-players that they really like, the Lakers could undoubtedly afford to sign two players to max deals as the $94 million figure puts max salaries at $22 million per year for tier 1 players (0-6 years in league), $26.4 million per year for tier 2 players (7-9 years in league), and $30.8 million per for tier 3 players (10-plus years of service).
What remains the biggest question for the Lakers, though, is whether or not they should go all-in this offseason with the cap-room that they have or if they should save this ample amount of cap space for the summer of 2017 when the cap jumps again, a figure that Charania estimates will be around $113 million.
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Because the Lakers are a tight-lipped front office and organization, it’s impossible to fully know their thoughts and strategy going into free agency and this offseason. However, this new cap number only proves that, if they want to be aggressive, they have more than enough room to do so.