Contending for championships in the modern NBA is expensive. It’s not just the salaries of the players. For teams that are over the cap but use Bird rights or exceptions to re-sign their own players and go further over the salary cap, there are also progressively increasing luxury tax payments to deal with. If the Los Angeles Lakers want to keep their current roster together next offseason, this soft cap — and the penalties for exceeding it — are something they’ll have to contend with.
If you want to dive into the minutiae of how a tax bill is calculated, Larry Coon has you covered in his CBA FAQ, but the main thing to know is that according to cap expert Eric Pincus of Bleacher Report, the Lakers could be set to pay more than $100 million in tax payments — that’s on top of player salaries — if they attempt to keep this roster together this offseason.