The National Basketball Players Association and the NBA have agreed to extend the deadline to decide whether or not to opt out of the current collective bargaining agreement as per Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.
Both the NBPA and the league had until next week on Dec. 15 to inform the other whether or not they planned to opt out of the current CBA in December 2023. The current CBA is set to expire after the 2023-24 season. The NBA's board of governors will hold a virtual meeting next week on Wednesday in which it is expected that they ratify the extension and push it into February.
Back in October, a report surfaced that suggested NBA owners were pushing for an ‘upper salary limit' which is essentially a hard cap, in efforts to curb some of the top teams' spending. Currently, teams like the Golden State Warriors are well into the luxury tax due to their high payrolls. A hard cap would prevent those teams from exceeding a certain number when it comes to team salaries.
So far, the idea of a hard cap has been met with resistance from the players union. The NBA and the NBPA are still able to agree on a long-term deal with the new proposed deadline extension.
There still remains the possibility of an incoming lockout after this current CBA expires. The last NBA lockout came right before the 2011-2012 season. The lockout began in July 2011 and lasted 161 days. It delayed the start of the season until Christmas Day.