The Suns Have Entered the NBA’s Uncharted, Punitive Territory

The NBA’s $76 billion largesse from its new national TV deals hasn’t yet started to reach individual teams. But it soon will, and the economic signs are already starting to show. 

The Suns on Thursday signed guard Josh Okogie to a two-year, $16 million deal, with the second year not guaranteed. While hardly remarkable in itself, the agreement pushes the team beyond $400 million in total projected player payroll and luxury tax costs for the upcoming season, according to ESPN salary cap expert Bobby Marks. 

That $400 million figure had not been previously hit in league history, and Phoenix will be operating in the more punitive “second apron” of the NBA’s complex salary cap, set for this coming season at a threshold of $188.9 million. That higher level of exceeding the cap imposes a series of additional limitations, particularly around trades, and even raises the possibility of moving teams’ first-round draft slots to the end of the round. 

But thanks in part to the forthcoming media money—more than doubling the NBA’s current pacts on an annual basis—the Suns have been emboldened to follow the lead of recent title-winning teams in going well past the cap. The Warriors have made a regular practice lately of paying hefty luxury tax bills, as a result of their prior, Stephen Curry–led dynasty. 

The defending champion Celtics, meanwhile, just signed a league-record individual player contract for the second straight year, this time with forward Jayson Tatum, even as the team is up for sale. Boston, too, is slated to be a second-apron team this coming season.

Different Circumstances

Unlike those successful franchises that have rings to show for their high-spending ways, the Suns remain in an uphill climb competitively. The team did reach the 2021 NBA Finals, but since then has lost twice in the conference semifinals and this past season was swept by the Timberwolves in the first round. 

Team owner Mat Ishbia, however, has shown a particularly aggressive mindset, and his total player costs for the 2025–26 season are currently projected to rise even further and approach $500 million. Despite competing in a loaded Western Conference against talented teams such as the Mavericks, Nuggets, Thunder, and Timberwolves, the Suns are going all in, led by their trio of Kevin Durant, Bradley Beal, and Devin Booker, who will combine to earn nearly $151 million this year. The figure for just those three players will rise to nearly $162 million for the ’25–26 season.

Elsewhere in the league, however, the second apron of the salary cap has constricted many teams’ offseason activity and, in many respects, is serving its intended purpose of controlling spending.