By Lewis Gould
Sixers rookie phenom Ben Simmons is smiling this morning.
Even though he has yet to play a regular season NBA game as he rehabs from a broken foot:
He just got a $27 million bump in pay!
The new collective bargaining agreement, announced last week, will increase salaries for future first-round picks – an easy change with the salary cap skyrocketing.
But what about players already stuck onabsurdly low-paying rookie-scale contracts?
From Tim Bontemps of the Washington Post:
In the 2017-18 season, all players under a rookie scale contract from the past three drafts (2014, 2015 and 2016) will see their salary increase for that season by 15 percent. In 2018-19, players still under rookie deals from the 2015 and 2016 drafts will see their salaries increase for that season by 30 percent. Finally, in the 2019-20 season, players in the fourth and final year of their rookie contracts will see their salary that season increase by 45 percent.
these increases will not be part of the salary cap figures for these players, which will remain as they already were.
That means a $27,224,241 raise for 2016 No. 1 pick Ben Simmons over the next three years. The extra money won’t count against the 76ers’ cap. (Will it count toward the salary floor?)
This is essentially a version of cap smoothing that helps only the league’s young players. The veterans locked into now-below-market deals are apparently out of luck.
