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Projecting the 2023-24 NBA Salary Cap, exactly

An educated guess, based on what we know now

Memphis Grizzlies v Dallas Mavericks Photo by Sam Hodde/Getty Images

At the end of June, the NBA will release its official numbers for the 2023-24 Season. The most important number is the Salary Cap figure. I believe I can tell you the exact 2023-24 Salary Cap number they will announce in late June. It will be $136,021,000. Why am I confident in such a specific number? It’s because of one thing we already knew, two things that leaked from the new CBA, and the fact that it’s always rounded.

The One thing we already knew

  1. We already had the estimated Salary Cap for 2023-24 at $134,000,000. An estimated increase of $10,345,000 from the $123,655,000 Salary Cap for 2022-23. This means the NBA was very confident it would be around or more than this before they negotiated the new CBA.

Two Things we found out about from the leaked new CBA

  1. Licensing counts in BRI. The around 160 million in Licensing will now count as Basketball Related Income. BRI is shared 50/50 between owners and players. 80 million divided by 30 teams means the cap estimate should increase by $2,666,667.
  1. Cap Smoothing as reported in the new CBA means that the cap cannot go up by more than 10%. The Licensing bump on top of the Estimated rise of $10,345,000 pushes the increase past the constraint of 10%. Cap smoothing would kick in and limit the 2023-24 salary cap to at most $136,020,500.

NBA Likes round numbers

Every Salary Cap number since the NBA started having one in 1984-85 has ended with 3 zeros. Therefore, I believe the $136,020,500 will round up to $136,021,000. I’m going to start using this number as the 2023-24 Salary Cap number for my Cap Cheat Sheet and for calculating Kyrie’s max.

Cheat Sheet with an imagined Kyrie re-signed for a max through at least 2027.

Kyrie’s full 5-year max from Mavericks and his full 4-year max from any other team using the $136,021,000 number.

I know the obvious questions that will arise now that I believe we know the Salary Cap for the 2023-24 season. I’ll post an article soon that answers all the “How much cap space do the Mavericks have if...” questions. I’m sure someone who didn’t get this far is already asking me how much cap space the Mavericks have in a specific scenario in the comments. I’ll get to those I promise!