Zach Lowe With FA Primer

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The NBA's crazy season is upon us. And this time around, as many as 14 teams could have at least $10 million in cap space.1 This would normally be a recipe for hilarious overpays, given the lack of true superstar power in this class after Dwight Howard and Chris Paul and especially since that group with potential gobs of cap room does not include either Los Angeles team.

But this will be the third offseason under the league's new collective bargaining agreement, and perhaps the first when some long-term market trends might start to cement. The luxury tax rates go up dramatically for the first time under the new CBA, and after the rush of the lockout offseason and some internal adjustments, teams have finally had time to breathe and absorb the league's new reality. Executives are paying closer attention than usual to how the other 29 teams behave and to how the market for player talent evolves. That market, which is not really a free market, moves in unpredictable and sometimes contradictory ways, and its long-term evolution can change the way teams seek to construct championship rosters. Keeping all this in mind, here are a series of questions for the league's busy time, with help from more than 20 executives league-wide:

1. Where do the big dogs eat? And how fast?

The big dogs, of course, are Howard and Paul, and the collective bargaining agreement gives the Los Angeles teams a major home-court advantage in re-signing them. The Clips and Lakers, respectively, can offer one extra season (a fifth year) and larger annual raises than any rival suitor, an edge that creates nearly a $30 million gap between in-house and outside max offers. That $30 million figure is a bit misleading, since any rival suitor that snares these guys could sign them down the road to a second max contract, erasing some of that gap. But both Howard and Paul are in their late 20s, with lingering health problems, and they'd be justified in trying to lock up as much guaranteed moola as possible right now. Both L.A. teams can also sign-and-trade these players, transactions that broaden the market a bit and bring at least some compensation in return.2

We know the other suitors. Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta will pursue both, and though none of the three has anything close to the sort of cap room required to actually sign both stars outright, both the Rockets and Hawks have a combination of cap room and intriguing potential sign-and-trade assets.3 The Texas teams will leverage their appealing cities and the lack of any income tax, while the Hawks will dangle something their hometown ties to Howard, the promise of playing with at least one other talented player, the fantastic "screeching Hawk" sound effect the in-house public address system plays after some baskets, and, I dunno, strip clubs.

A few other teams, including the Jazz and Pistons, could theoretically enter this derby, but even executives on those teams would chuckle if you suggested it to them. Needless to say, where these players go, and when, will have a giant impact on the league's landscape and this summer's free-agency market. The faster Paul and Howard resolve their situations, the faster the second- and third-tier players can suss out their market worth and let free agency proceed. The Clippers and Lakers are back near ground zero if these guys walk, with the option of keeping their powder dry for the more starry free-agent classes of 2014 and 2015.4 Things are much sunnier if the stars stick around, especially for the Lakers, who currently have only one player Steve Nash under contract for 2014-15, and could thus be major players in free agency a year from now even if they re-sign Howard to a max deal.

And if the stars stay in Hollywood, these other suitors will be left with unused cash in the secondary market. The Hawks are in an especially sticky situation in this regard. It has come up over and over that Atlanta has something like $35 million in cap room, but that's not actually true. Josh Smith, probably no. 3 on most free-agent lists, has a massive $16.4 million cap hold, and Teague, a very solid option at point guard, carries a hold of around $6 million. Those two charges leave Atlanta with only about $11 million in cap space well short of the approximately $20 million both Howard and Paul will command. And this doesn't even factor in holds linked to Kyle Korver and Zaza Pachulia, valuable backups and passable starters on the right team.

But the Hawks can get around all of this stuff by filling out some quick paperwork once the league reopens for business if they get word that either Paul or Howard wants to come to the A-T-L. Getting a clear picture of the market early is key, so that the Hawks or any other team have the appropriate mechanisms in place to sign the players they want.5

2. What is the new free-agency landscape like?

Talk to executives around the league about the upcoming free-agency period and two names usually come up within the first five minutes: David West and Monta Ellis.

West is almost certainly staying with the Pacers. They took the Heat to seven games this season, his cap hold erases all of their (fake) cap room, and they'd have only about $6 million in space without that cap hold anyway. West remains a very good player, and the Pacers have no ready replacement on hand (nor the means to get one). Dealing Danny Granger's expiring deal for minimal salary in return would change things, but that's a tough task without attaching a serious sweetener.

West's name has come up, if not necessarily because he's a player teams are lining up to sign. (Though some will kick the tires.) It comes up because of the nature of his latest contract a two-year, $20 million deal that just expired. Teams under the new collective bargaining agreement are more wary about taking on long-term salaries, but they also need to spend money. Some teams need to spend because they're actually interested in winning, or at least in competing. The Mavericks, Bucks, and Pistons come to mind as examples of such teams, and you could also probably lump the Blazers and Cavaliers into that group. Dallas loaded up last season's roster with one-year deals around Dirk Nowitzki in an attempt to stay relevant and lean, and both the Pistons and Bucks are tired of losing and have incentives to avoid it. The Bucks dealt a valuable asset in Tobias Harris to secure a playoff spot last season, and Detroit faces the very scary prospect of sending an unprotected first-round pick to Charlotte in 2015 or 2016.

Other teams will have to spend because the league mandates they do so. The new collective bargaining agreement increased the minimum amount each team must spend on players. The so-called salary floor is now set at 90 percent of the cap level, which means in 2013-14, the minimum team payroll will be around $52.65 million about $3 million higher than it was this season. Teams rarely have any problem punching their fists through the floor, but seven teams were within $6 million of that $52.65 million figure last season, and five Cleveland, Charlotte, Phoenix, Houston, and Sacramento were quite close to it. The Kings in the dying years of the glorious Maloof era famously flirted with the salary floor, and even fell below it after the 2011 trade deadline.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/9415882/the-2013-nba-free-agency-primer