Author: Monojit Mandal
The NBA and the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) have formally signed a new collective bargaining agreement that will last until the 2029-30 season. The seven-year agreement will come into force on July 1, 2023. In a joint statement released on Wednesday, the league and the union announced the ratification.
The new agreement includes a much-debated event during the season, comparable to European soccer’s cup competitions, which will begin next season. According to ESPN, pool play for the event will be inserted into the regular season schedule starting in November, followed by a single-elimination competition for the top eight teams. Other important modifications to the agreement include a second “salary cap” that would penalize teams that exceed the salary cap, as well as adjustments to the ‘luxury tax’ that would give more flexibility to lower-spending teams.
Individual player awards, such as Most Valuable Player, will now require a minimum of 65 games to be eligible, and marijuana will be officially eliminated from the league’s drug testing program. The NBA stopped random marijuana testing during the Covid-protective “bubble” in 2020 and hasn’t restarted it since.
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The NBA and NBPA began negotiations on a new collective bargaining agreement in 2020, and a tentative agreement was reached on April 1 of this year. The new agreement will offer the league and its players stability for the rest of the decade.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver praised the deal, saying,“We are pleased to have finalized a new collective bargaining agreement that will provide continued growth and stability for our league and its players for years to come.”
“We believe we’ve reached an agreement that will work for both sides,” said NBPA executive director Michele Roberts, “and we’re excited to see it go into effect.”
The approval of the new agreement is the latest milestone in the NBA’s season of change, which has seen the implementation of new regulations and processes aimed at protecting player safety during the current pandemic. With the new collective bargaining agreement in place, the league and its players can focus on providing exciting basketball and entertainment for fans around the world.