Let's move in chronological order.

N b A draft November 18th, Free agency on the 20th.

Two days later, the regular season starts on the 22nd off December.

What's important to note is that the salary cap and the luxury tax are going to remain the same as last season.

You would think, after all the money they lost in China with that whole situation with Daryl Morey all the money they lost by having to go to the bubble and not have fans in games since March and all of the regular season games that were essentially canceled, you would think they'd scaled back and say, Listen, fellas, we can't operate under a 2019 business or economic model.

Life is way different in 2020 and 2021 but they're saying everything is the same, so that's got to be a good sign about where the league feels their health is.

Let's get Jay's perspective on a second, but first Tim Bontemps, ESPN NBA writer on Freddie and FitzSimons on ESPN radio on how all of this came together for Adam Silver.

Um, ever since the MBA season ended in the bubble in early October, the two sides have really been, uh, sitting down and trying to hammer this thing out.

And now, unlike saying baseball, where there has been a lot of animosity between the players and the league in recent years, particularly between the commissioner, Rob Manfred, and the players, um, the working relationship between the players and league is as good as it's ever been.

And both sides were kind of continually working towards trying to get this thing done.

And as we see today, they were able to come to an agreement that, you know, really covers all the bases that they need to and has a getting back on the court here in about five weeks.

So this is where it's really interesting.

I do get the N B A a lot of credit because their relationship the MBA p A with the MBA is a lot different than what you had a major league baseball.

What you have in football.

They have been working towards is to just give people a little bit of context.

Here.

10% of player salaries are kept in escrow, Captain Escrow and their captain escrow due to in case, you know, situations happen that they can use that escrow, uh, to, you know, whatever direction they want to use every year.

This happens yes, every year and players contracts is written into the C B, a senior contract.

So zoo and I think what they've done here is they've increased that to 13%.

And I think they're using that buffer in order to say we may not get to a place where we are allowed to have fans in the stadiums and our fans being in the stadiums account for 40% off players revenue.

I mean that of the MBA's revenue.

That's a lot of money.

So getting to 7 to 72 games, it's a pretty important number doesn't leave a lot of room.

A lot of margin for Eric E.

Because you also have You have national deals.

You have the ESPN, the TNT deals.

You also have a local TV deals, so explain to me so the 13% they hold back what do they do with the 13% or 10% 10% they hold back?

Typically 10.

They're boosting up to 13% due to having some extra funds due to some of the funds at the MBA.

Did lose this year from not having fans in the stadiums and obviously taking into account everything happening with the pandemic and a billion dollar bubble.

And although so do they slide, that whatever that number is from collective players, so they slide that number over so that the salary cap can remain the same as it is or has it always been?

Do they use that money to subsidize discussion purposes?

I I don't know all the innuendos of the C B A.

We have to get somebody on that could explain like we're in a conference here because, I mean, you're getting down to the nuances, right?

This is the the cap and house all structured out.

We'll have to get somebody on to explain all that, but I do know that that number has gone up and it gets interesting if we don't allow fans in the stadium because then if it gets to a certain point, you're losing out on so much revenue and what I was telling you to local TV deals.

Why that's important is if you, if you get to 70 games like extra Billion dollar Zubin, remember this year?

70 deal, Two games.

There's a lot less margin for error.

Normally, key.

It's 70 games, 82 games, right?

Jay's talking, hitting 70 games that there's only 72 to play this season, and that's where it becomes.

How do you make those games up?

That's why it was so important that they got to 70 games.

That's why you saw the MBA say, Hey, look, before we're not just gonna jump right to the playoffs.

We're gonna play 10 or 11 more games to satisfy those local TV deals in order to generate that revenue, then build into the playoffs.

You mentioned fans in the stands, indoor football facilities.

They haven't had any.

Only outdoors is what I've seen.

I haven't seen any endure, uh, stadiums with fans.

The Cowboys have about 25,000, but it really depends on how you think about.

Once again, that's a 100,000 seat stadium that's way bigger than any other NFL stadiums.

So socially distanced behavior becomes a lot easier in a bigger stadium that is depending upon your state, which is governed, what rules or stipulations they have in place.

But still, that's not meeting the whole league.

That is entirely that's meeting one teams needs.

And that's still drastically less than what they would accumulate exactly in the N.

B A.

You got 16,000 seat arenas.

What are you gonna put in there?

3000 people?

Exactly.

And we should also mention that this is important.

It's a giant, rainy day fund.

Think about the escrow is a gigantic rainy day fund that if they have to dip into it because of something crazy, they'll be able to do it.

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