The bull market the NBA experienced with the cap spike in 2016 and 2017 has created a bear market now. In the 2018 offseason, there will only be a small handful of teams with cap space.

"The trade market is mostly sellers right now," one general manager said. "There's only a few buyers. Looking at everyone's books, I don't think that's going to change much this summer."

There will be five teams likely to pay the luxury tax this season compared to two last season.

"The luxury tax was not designed for this many teams to pay it," a league executive said. "Many of those owners probably didn't think they'd be paying it. Quite a few of those teams are probably going to take steps to get out of the tax or limit new spending."

"Picture the spending on salaries as a large tank of water," one GM said. "The last several years, the tank has been getting bigger, and so we've been filling it with more water. But this year the tank is staying about the same size. There's no place for the water to go. There's only so much the owners are going to spend when you have a luxury tax out there."