The Salary Cap, Visualized
2026-27 payrolls from live contract data, the apron system in plain English, a trade machine that enforces the real matching rules, and the legalese that turns draft picks into currency.
The system
Five lines that define every front office's summer.
Salary floor $148.5M — Teams must spend at least this (90% of the cap). Come in under and the shortfall is paid to your own players.
Salary cap $165.0M — A soft cap — teams routinely pass it using exceptions (Bird rights, mid-level). Room below it is 'cap space'.
Luxury tax $200.4M — Every dollar above this line is taxed on a progressive scale — repeat offenders pay steeper 'repeater' rates.
First apron $209.0M — Trade math tightens to 110% take-back, no sign-and-trade acquisitions, no buyout-market signings above the mid-level.
Second apron $221.7M — The freeze: no aggregating salaries in trades, no cash in deals, no taxpayer mid-level, and your 1st-round pick seven years out can be frozen.
Where all 30 teams stand
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Trade machine
Pick two teams, check the players going each way, and see whether the CBA lets it through.
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What experience is worth
Max salaries are set by years of service — a percentage of the cap, not a negotiation.
0–6 years of service
$41.2M
max starting salary (25% of cap)
7–9 years of service
$49.5M
max starting salary (30% of cap)
10+ years of service
$57.7M
max starting salary (35% of cap)
A max contract is defined by years of service, not talent: a 26-year-old superstar and a 26-year-old role player have the same 25% ceiling. Raises run 8% per year with Bird rights (re-signing with your own team) vs 5% leaving — that spread is why stars rarely walk for nothing. Minimum salaries also scale with experience, from roughly $1.4M for a rookie to about $4.2M at 10+ years (approximate 2026-27 scale). Rookie first-rounders sign fixed “rookie scale” deals slotted by pick number — the cheapest good contracts in the sport, which is why picks are currency.
Draft picks: the fine print
Why 'we'll just trade picks' is harder than it sounds.
The Stepien rule
A team may never leave itself without a first-round pick in two consecutive future drafts. Trade your 2027 first and your 2028 first is locked — which is why blockbusters are built on alternating years plus swaps.
The seven-year window
Picks can only be traded up to seven drafts out. You cannot mortgage a decade — the 2033 draft is the current horizon.
Protections
Picks travel with conditions — 'top-10 protected' means the seller keeps it if it lands in the top 10, and it rolls to next year or converts to second-rounders if it keeps missing.
The second-apron pick freeze
Finish a season above the second apron and your first seven years out is frozen (untradeable). Stay there three seasons in five and that pick drops to the end of the round — the CBA's way of making deep-tax dynasties pay in draft capital, not just dollars.
The Stepien rule in practice — a team can trade at most every-other future first:
Where the cap is going
Growth and deterioration: every contract is a bet against this curve.
The dashed line projects ~7% annual growth; the band spans a conservative 4.5% to the CBA’s 10% yearly maximum (cap smoothing caps growth at 10% no matter how fast league revenue rises — the lesson of the 2016 spike, when a un-smoothed TV deal jumped the cap 34% in one summer and broke the market). 2026-27 itself came in below early projections on a media-revenue dip. A contract that looks heavy today deflates as the cap grows — a $40M salary is 24% of this year’s cap but ~18% of the projected 2030-31 cap. That’s the “growth” bet behind every long extension; the deterioration bet is a declining player aging faster than the cap inflates his deal away.