"The
Tax Apron is the amount above the Tax Level that cannot be exceed by any team that uses the
non-taxpayer mid-level exception or the
bi-annual exception, or by any team that acquires a free agent in a
sign-and-trade.
When the Tax Apron applies to a team, it serves as a “hard cap” that the team cannot exceed under any circumstances. The Tax Apron for the 2019-20 season is
$138.928 million. (Because there were so many sign-and-trade transactions during the 2019-20 free agency period, along with a few teams that used the non-taxpayer mid-level and bi-annual exceptions,
half of the league is hard-capped.) The Tax Apron amount increases (or decreases) each year at one-half the rate of increase (or decrease) in the Salary Cap."
https://cbabreakdown.com/salary-cap-overview
This is important because now that we will be hard capped, we cannot go above the salary cap for any reason. That includes signing veteran minimum players.
Also important, NBA teams are required to have a minimum of 13 players on their roster. 12 active and 1 inactive.
Here is a scenario that we can no longer do because of the hard cap:
View attachment 48267
This would not work because we remove 5 players from our team, bringing us down to 10. Durant makes 11. We would need one more player to achieve the minimum active 12 players. We would need 2 players to hit the 13 player mark, but no cap space to sign those players because we would still be at the hard cap.
If I am getting any of this wrong
@hoopsjock let me know.