As we continue to dive into the basics of the new collective bargaining agreement that will end the 2011 NBA lockout, we continue to find new rules that will affect the Washington Wizards. We already talked about the Rashard Lewis amnesty scenario and how it may be affected by new higher salary floor situation, but there's another new provision that could affect the Wizards' free-agent plans.
According to the agreement, teams will have less time to address offer sheets made to restricted free agents:
Period for a player's prior team to match an Offer Sheet that a Restricted Free Agent receives from a new team shortened from 7 to 3 days.
That could potentially affect the timeline of the Wizards' eventual decision on Nick Young.
In the past, few teams gave massive deals to restricted free agents, because the home team had plenty of time to match. Now that the time period has dropped from seven to three days, we could see more of those offers. Young is hardly the only restricted free agent on the market, but he's one many teams could covet, especially those close to the salary floor. That means the Wizards may need to move quickly to get Young at a good price, something they would like to do according to Michael Lee.
This, of course, also applies if the Wizards want to pursue one of the other restricted free agents on the market such as Memphis' Marc Gasol, Philadelphia's Thaddeus Young and others.