July 8, 2009, at 4:20 pm
ESPN produced a report on Wednesday that the NBA’s salary cap is expected to be lowered to approximately $50 million next season.
According to the Worldwide Leader…
In a memo announcing next season’s salary cap and luxury-tax threshold, sent out shortly before the league’s annual July moratorium on signings and trades was lifted at 12:01 a.m. ET Wednesday, NBA teams also received tentative projections from the league warning that the cap is estimated to drop to somewhere between $50.4 million and $53.6 million for the 2010-11 season.
This is bad for the Knicks “Get LeBron James Plan” very bad.
When Knicks president Donnie Walsh took the job in April 2008 — before the global economic downturn that, as with most businesses, has hit the NBA so hard — some teams around the league were projecting a 2010-11 cap ceiling in the $63 million range per team. The Knicks, for example, increasingly look as though they will be restricted to signing one maximum-salaried player that summer if the latest projections hold, which theoretically would only enhance the Cleveland Cavaliers‘ chances of retaining LeBron James, given the other holes in the Knicks’ roster. New York’s original plan to lure James was founded upon trying to sign James and a second marquee free agent in 2010.
This is certainly sobering news for NBA GM’s and players. All these players who were hoping to catch on in big markets in 2010 (LeBron/Wade/Bosh/Amare) need to wake up and smell the roses of economic downturn. Those aforementioned players are going to giving up, potentially, a lot of money by not signing extensions with their current teams.
As it stands right now the Knicks have roughly $27 million in salary committed to 2010. That’s without resigning Lee or Robinson, or singing a Free Agent this off-season as rumored. After all this moving and shaking the Knicks have done they only have $23 million in cap space for the Summer Of LeBron and no draft pick next year.
Everyone scoffed at me when I said the Knicks wouldn’t have the cap space to add two max players after the Randolph and Crawford trades. Now they barely have enough cap space to offer LeBron.
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