Luxury tax 2024-25: How much is each NBA team projected to spend?

The NBA has had a luxury tax for more than twenty years, but only over the last few have the numbers grown exponentially. In the 2019-20 season, the entire NBA paid only $10,143,106 in luxury tax combined; in 2022-23, that grew to over $670 million.

With each new Collective Bargaining Agreement, the luxury tax rules get tweaked. Where once the tax was a dollar-for-dollar affair, amounts now vary via thresholds based on the amount a team is paying, and whether they have paid it in past seasons. While in recent years, myriad factors – from the new TV deal to the huge growth in the salary cap – have meant much greater revenues and franchise values around the league, now many ownership groups are feeling a pinch.

What continues to be true, though, is that the amounts paid in luxury tax are distributed amongst the teams that do not pay. As will be seen below, 15 teams – exactly half the league – are projected to pay almost exactly $600 million in luxury tax in the 2024-25 season, which means the other half of the league stands to get a proportional share of that. There is therefore incentive to get under the threshold for those who are close to it. But as will be seen, some teams have no chance of that.

The luxury tax threshold for the 2024-25 NBA season has been set at $170,814,000. With this in mind, here’s a projection at this point in time of each NBA luxury tax payer this year.