Trade & FA 2025-26: Free Agency Starts 5pm CST/6pm EST

[loki]

I'm not sure where you are getting your $150M number from that you keep using for the Mavs tax next season with the current contracts, but I think it's way high. I don't have my tax widget on this computer, but if they do nothing at all, the Google AI pegs the tax bill for 2026-27 at about $65M. For me that's a fortune, but for NBA teams choosing to work in the vicinity of A2 like the Mavs have deliberately done, it's not a cause for alarm. It's the general cost of doing business. IIRC Cuban paid way more than that one year about 20-25 years ago in order to try to get extra talent, before the NBA started tightening the rules. 

The numbers you're seeing are most likely calculated with non-repeater rates. Here's how I'm getting my numbers. I'm assuming a $166M cap based on the league's most recent projections. I won't claim a mistake is impossible, but I think this is in alignment with what Bobby Marks projected recently.

Dallas currently has 12 players under contract for 26-27 (including DLo's player option). Adding that to the $2.3M McGee/Prosper dead cap charges gives a total of $217.1M. They currently have the 8th best lottery odds. If that's where they pick, the 120% rookie scale value would be $7.4M. Let's add a single vet min at $2.5M and assume they run with 14 roster spots. The new total is $227M which would be $25.3M over the $201.7M tax limit.

The 25-26 tax brackets are in increments of $5.685M. The projected cap increase would set the 26-27 brackets in increments of $6.1M. The tax rates I'm using for each bracket are as follows (non-repeater/repeater).

1/3
1.25/3.25
3.5/5.5
4.75/6.75
5.25/7.25
and so on in .5 increments

$25.3M over the tax would result in a bill of $119.5M when paying the repeater rates. This would only be $68.8M if they were paying the non-repeater rates. Below is a graph I created before PJ's extension that shows roughly what each increase in salary would do to the tax payment and overall bill. If the Mavs were to win the lottery they go off the chart.



There are certainly things that can be done to mitigate this. I'm being a little more charitable already by limiting it to 14 roster spots. I don't actually expect them to go off the chart or anywhere close to that, but I do think the situation is a bit more dire than you're suggesting if they do nothing.