The NBA Salary Cap is the limit to the total amount of money that National Basketball Association teams are allowed to pay their players. While this seems simple enough in concept, the salary cap is in actuality extremely complex, and contains many obscure rules and loopholes as the NBA has a "soft" cap.
The actual amount of the cap varies on a year-to-year basis, and is calculated as a percentage of the League's revenue from the previous season; for instance, in 2006-07, the NBA's salary cap was approximately US$53.135 million per team, and for the 2007-08 season it was $55.63 million[1]. Like many professional sports leagues, the NBA has a salary cap to keep teams in larger markets (with more revenue) from buying all of the top players and extending their advantage over smaller-market franchises. The 2008-09 salary cap has been set at $58.68 million.
