The book Crunching Numbers devotes an entire chapter (Ch 8) to rookie contracts.
To make the topic “nugget sized” I will try to remove a lot of the explanatory detail, and focus on the key points. I also plan to link to four other nuggets in order to flesh out some of the details — expect those nuggets to be published one at a time over the next few days.
The 2002 CBA and the 25% rule
Let me start with one rule that was originally written into the 2002 CBA: the 25% rule.