NBA News NBA News, Match Reports and Updates
Although the NBA Playoffs are far from over, the Suns’ season is a wrap, and Phoenix fans are already more concerned with offseason things than who ultimately gets to lift the Larry O’Brien trophy. The internet is full of Suns trade proposals and free agency talk, with a little draft speculation thrown in here and there.
In this article, I’m not going to speak on what the Suns should do, but rather what they can do, how they can get things done, and the tools they have to work with.
Advertisement
First, let’s look at some key league thresholds for the 2026-27 season:
Luxury Tax Threshold: $201 million
First Apron: $208 million
Second Arpon: $222 million
Salary Cap SITREP
Second, let’s summarize where the Suns stand right now.
The Suns are currently looking at a cap sheet of $185,670,477 for 11 players (and $23.2 million in dead money) under standard NBA contracts for the 2026-27 season. That puts them over the cap and just $15,329,523 under the luxury tax threshold. They have three players — Highsmith ($1 million guaranteed), Bouyea (non-guaranteed), and Ighodaro (non-guaranteed) — on contracts that aren’t fully guaranteed or are club options ($6,898,968 total value). If they were not to bring back any of those three, it would get them a total of $178,771,509 in guaranteed salary and put them $22,228,491 below the luxury tax threshold.
Advertisement
One thing to keep in mind is that the luxury tax threshold is NOT the same as the first tax apron line. The first apron is $8 million above the luxury tax threshold.
Phoenix starts out the offseason $23,329,523 below the first tax apron, but could get that up to $30,228,491 by waiving the three players on non-guaranteed contracts. While that extra $6.9 million of space added to the cap sheet cushion by waiving three non-guaranteed contracts might look good at first glance, it doesn’t actually cover the cost of replacing them with three other players on vet minimum contracts. Yes, it would actually cost more to do that unless the replacements were all players with one year of experience or less. As doing it really wouldn’t help free up a significant amount…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/understanding-mle-bae-options-suns-170000765.html
Author :
Publish date : 2026-05-14 17:00:00
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.
