Full transparency here. We’re not actually tracking where teams stand against the salary cap, and there’s a good reason for that.
The NBA cap, which was officially set at $164.961 million on Tuesday, isn’t a hard cap like, say, the NFL’s salary cap. Teams can exceed it, and most do, though there are penalties. Franchises that are over the cap cannot simply use salary dollars to sign free agents. They must utilize exceptions or limit themselves to league-minimum contracts.
However, since the vast majority of NBA teams regularly operate above the cap, tracking the luxury tax threshold provides a more accurate gauge of each team’s spending power.
Once teams go over the tax line, which was set at $200.428 million, they face stricter penalties. They must pay financial penalties to the league and, perhaps more notably, have the non-taxpayer exception ($15 million) replaced with the more restrictive taxpayer exception ($6.1 million).
The first tax apron ($209.015 million) and the second tax apron ($221.686 million) face even more significant penalties, and things compound for teams that exceed the tax line or the tax aprons for multiple seasons.
What we’ll actually examine below is each team’s estimated space below the tax line, not accounting for cap holds, according to Spotrac.