A month into the NBA’s annual free agency period, many available players have had to scrounge for whatever they can get or opt into existing deals. After teams’ wild spending in 2016, there simply isn’t enough money to go around.
A decision made in 2015 by the National Basketball Players Association continues to cloud the league’s salary cap picture. With a massive new television deal looming, the union chose to reject an NBA proposal to gradually smooth that influx of cash into the cap, instead preferring a historic, one-time spike in 2016.
It’s a decision that ranks among the most consequential in NBA history, allowing the Golden State Warriors to assemble quite possibly the most talented team ever by adding Kevin Durant; producing a heap of millstone contracts among other teams; and leaving free agents the past two summers with a largely barren landscape.