How NBA’s New CBA Incentivizes Parity to Benefit Jazz & Small Markets

The newest NBA CBA agreed upon by players and executives is an important one, so much so that considering it a 'league-breaking' alteration might not be much of a stretch. Many front offices around the association have been scrambling this summer to ensure their teams align with these new regulations.

To see the implications of this new agreement, ESPN’s Tim Bontemps's recent piece on NBA parity gives some nice insight about the base of this new CBA, along with how it looks to present a major boost to teams not stationed in a mega-market:

"For the vast majority of the teams, the new rules have both given them more tools to build out their rosters and made it necessary to spend more money earlier. Increased flexibility in the rules governing how much money teams need to have in a trade... Ultimately, though, the new agreement is geared toward forcing teams to make hard decisions about which players to pay -- the kinds of moves the Clippers, Warriors and Celtics made this offseason. And, by extension, the overall pool of talent is spread out more evenly -- producing more teams capable of competing for titles."

Putting more financial pressure on bigger markets and spenders, in turn, make their roster decisions much more significant. Rather than highly profiting teams finding pathways to enter the luxury tax at little to no restrictions, it puts a necessary hold on that advantage to create balance.

Former owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, Marc Lasry, was a key piece in this new CBA agreement. He went on to give his encouraging thoughts on league parity in ESPN's "The Hoop Collective” in June, detailing the needed aid it gives smaller franchises to compete:

"Parity ends up being beneficial to smaller teams. If you just think of it that way, the problem if you're a small-market team is that people are going to want to play in New York, L.A., Miami, Dallas, any of the big cities. And so going forward, that's going to be harder to do, from the tax aprons and just the way things are. All everybody wants is competition, because the more competition there is, the more teams at the beginning of the season that can say, 'We have a chance to win a championship,' the better it is for the league."

As unfortunate as it may be, teams like the Utah Jazz will tend to always fall behind the pecking order of some of the larger markets in the league. The challenge for ownership and league executives is to find the best way to counteract that natural disadvantage to make the competition an even playing field.

Thankfully, the newly agreed-upon CBA has put some invigorating changes in place to help establish that much-needed parity. It introduces a 'second apron for a team’s cap spending, described as a “trigger” for a "host of restrictions” by CBS Sports’ Sam Quinn. For simplicity, here’s how Quinn describes the newly formed apron that looks to help even out the league in his NBA CBA 101 article:

“The basic idea of those restrictions will be to make it harder for teams like the Los Angeles Clippers and Golden State Warriors to spend significantly more money on talent than their competitors, but we should note that these restrictions will only make it harder for teams to acquire new, expensive players. None of these changes will make it harder to retain players that a team has drafted and developed, and only in a few, rare cases will it become more difficult for teams to retain free agents they've signed from other teams. The NBA wants teams to be able to keep their players. It just doesn't want the rich to get richer."

In theory, this is exactly what Jazz fans would like to hear. It further incentivizes players to retain with the teams that drafted them while increasing the opportunity cost for bigger markets with the upper hand in signing those same players. All of this comes at no less of a cost for Utah than it did before the new CBA was enacted, so there is plenty to like with what is in place.

We already saw the Jazz profit from these new league adjustments this summer, a perfect example being the trade involving John Collins and the Atlanta Hawks. For the small price of Rudy Gay (who would later be released) and a second-round pick, Utah got their hands on a promising 25-year-old who has shown flashes of averaging 20 and 10 a night.

This type of move simply does not happen without the 2023 CBA in place. The Hawks were at risk of crossing that deadly second apron by holding onto John Collins’s $25 million a season, so a deal had to be made for the betterment of the Hawks’ team construction moving forward.

In a vacuum, we know Collins is likely worth a bit more than an ancient Rudy Gay and a second. However, the new rules in place make this a completely different ballgame.

As we enter into August, the bulk of the moves this offseason are wrapped up at this point. Other than still being in the grueling waiting process of seeing any movement from James Harden or Damian Lillard, most rosters are close to finalized leading up to October. Any other aftershocks coming from the new CBA will likely be more prominent further into next season or summer than it will be right now.

Still, fans can look forward to the hopeful and fruitful benefits coming from it later down the line. Looking forward to having some progression from the young guys, another offseason with cap space, and a gold mine of draft assets; the future begins to look even brighter for the Jazz.

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