The NBA and National Basketball Players Association announced the official ratification of their new seven-year collective bargaining agreement on Wednesday.

The agreement will begin on July 1 of this year and run through the 2029-30 season.

The biggest change in the new CBA is the introduction of a second apron above the luxury-tax line.

According to ESPN's Tim Bontemps, "The first apron is set at $7 million above the luxury-tax level in each season of the CBA (so $169 million for 2023-24), and the second apron is set at $17.5 million above the tax threshold (or $179.5 million). In future seasons, all of those numbers will rise at the same rate."

Any team above the second tax apron will lose access to the taxpayer mid-level exception, while "teams over either apron will be prevented from signing a player waived during the regular season if that player's pre-waiver salary was larger than the non-taxpayer midlevel exception (about $10.5 million this past season)," per Bontemps.

Additionally, the salary-matching exception will be reduced from within 125 percent to 110 percent. Starting in the summer of 2024, any team "over the second apron will no longer be able to aggregate salaries to trade for a single player making more money," according to Bontemps.

Teams over the second apron won't be able to include cash in trades. Continuously going over the second apron will also have major draft ramifications, and teams that go $10 million above the tax threshold will face far greater financial penalties.

The NBPA wasn't willing to agree to a hard salary cap, but the penalties for going over the second apron might effectively serve the same purpose.

While these changes targeting spending-happy teams might have a negative impact on veteran players, the new CBA also increased the amount that a player signing an extension could receive, from 120 percent of their current salary to 140 percent. Any player in the final year of a rookie deal will now be able to sign five-year extensions; previously, only players signing rookie max extensions could do so.

Players will also be able to decline a player option and sign a long-term extension at a lower figure than the player option. And any team that doesn't spend at least 90 percent of the salary cap will now be ineligible for the NBA's tax distribution.

Other changes include: The addition of a third two-way spot on a team's roster; the removal of marijuana testing; players can now sign endorsement deals with sports betting, cannabis and CBD companies; no limits on the number of players a team can have on designated veteran extensions and designated rookie extensions; players must now appear in at least 65 games to be eligible for awards like MVP, though there will be certain exemptions; All-NBA voting will now be positionless, a change from the current two-guard, two-forward, one-center format; and the addition of the long-rumored midseason tournament, similar to the tournaments in European soccer like England's FA Cup or Spain's Copa del Rey.