2015 NBA Free Agency: The salary cap may be higher than we thought

Ken Berger over at CBSSports just published an article revealing that the salary cap for next season may come in at as much as $2 million higher than the most recent projection. As you may remember from my article this morning, the cap was expected to rise to about $67.1 million for the 2015-16 season, which would be a fairly normal increase over this past season's cap of a bit less than $63.1 million. However, if what Berger says is true (and I trust that it is), the cap next year could actually be around $69 million. That jump of $6 million would be the largest since the owners and the NBPA last negotiated the CBA in 2011.

Now, I'd imagine the question on many minds is: why would the NBA's projection be so far off? And honestly, being off by $2 million is fairly unusual, so I get why one would ask. Last year, the cap was actually projected to come in about $150,000 higher than it actually did, so it's certainly odd that this year's projection would undershoot the actual number so much. But anyway, the reason the NBA isn't always on point with its cap projections is that the league won't figure out the exact amount of Basketball Related Income (or BRI) until July 8th, AKA the final day of the free agent moratorium. That need to sit down and calculate BRI is the reason the moratorium even exists in the first place.

Of course, the most important part of this is how it will affect the Knicks, Quite simply, it's really helpful. Under the $67.1 million projection, the Knicks were going to have $27.22 million in cap room. If the cap is actually $69 million, they'll have more than $29 million in room instead. With $29 million in space, New York will have the ability to sign a player at $15 million and two others at $8 million each or two at $12 million each and another at $7 million (don't forget that whenever the Knicks sign a player, they have one fewer Empty Roster Charge, so about $500,000 less than the player's first year salary is removed from the team's cap space). Either one of those scenarios would get the Knicks 3 solid-to-great contributors, assuming they spend the money wisely.

Phil Jackson was just gifted 2 million dollars. Let's hope he doesn't screw it up. Minutes until midnight.