Owner POV · Championship Economicsloading live 30T$154.647M cap 2025-26 · TV $76B 2025-36
Ring equity beats efficiency alone
Championship trumps regular season. 53-win Knicks > 64-win OKC on rings. Weighted wins W* = W + 2.5×PO wins. Player playoff minutes boosted 2.5× with quality q=1+0.12·PM+0.05·PTS clamped 0.65–1.65. FOR = 0.35·Draft + 0.35·Cap + 0.30·Foresight + ring bonus + valuation α.
cap% <80% A+ excellent flex<92% A · <100% B+ · <110% B · <125% B- else CD if over 2nd apron $207.8M hard-capTax $187.9M Apron1 $195.9M Apron2 $207.8M
Ring equity calculator
interactive — cap slider → FOR + title probcap% effective
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flex grade
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title prob boost
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FOR today end-of-season 2025-26: —. NYK Champion +16, SAS Runner +7, CLE Conf +3, OKC Conf +3. Playoff wins weighted 2.5×, real playoff games 7 finalists.
Bird rights & soft cap — plain English
Soft cap: you can go over to re-sign your own free agents using Bird Rights. 3 years with same team = full Bird, you can exceed cap any amount up to max. Early Bird (2 years) = 175% of prior salary. Non-Bird (1 year) = 120%. This is why older flat deals signed when cap $90-110M now at $154M are steals — cap grew faster than salary.
- Tax $187.9M: $1 for $1 over, repeater 2.5×–4× — 50% of tax pool goes to non-tax teams
- Apron1 $195.9M: no sign-and-trade for tax team, limited MLE to $5.7M tax-MLE
- Apron2 $207.8M hard cap: no aggregation, no cash, frozen pick 7 yrs out, no bi-annual. Cannot go over at any point. Flex dead.
- TV $76B 2025-36: ~$6.9B/yr vs $2.6B prior, cap growth 10% max/yr CBA 2023, floor 0% cannot fall — timing multiplier = 1+0.08·age +0.12·max(0,maturation-1)·3 where maturation=(1+capGrowth)/(1+salaryGrowth). Older cheap locks get +.