This may seem a little weird but I think a lot of teams are getting hard capped on purpose now. That way they don't have to answer questions as to why they're not willing to go into the luxury tax to improve the roster during the season. As the cap gets higher and higher it's a way for owners to keep payroll down without it looking like they aren't committed.
The real reason though is because when there is so much player movement it leads to teams not being in a situation similar to the Blazers the last few years where they used bird rights to go way over the cap. When you sign free agents and let yours go then you are usually using exceptions like the room, mid-level, bae, etc. Those avenues get you hard capped.