The owners want to add what is known as the ‘Carmelo Rule’ to the next CBA agreement.

What the ‘Carmelo Rule’ would do is  prevent teams from using a Bird exception to sign or extend a player acquired by trade unless they are acquired before July 1 of the final season of the player’s contract. That was how the New York Knicks were able to acquire Carmelo Anthony.

Other clauses that are proposed by the owners are:

• Shortening  guaranteed contracts to a maximum of three or four seasons
• Limiting Larry Bird rights — which enable teams to exceed the salary cap to re-sign their own free agents — to one player per team per season
• Reducing the annual mid-level exception, which was valued at $5.8 million last season, to roughly $3 million annually and limiting mid-level contracts to a maximum of two or three seasons in length as opposed to the current maximum of five seasons
•  Significant reductions in maximum salaries and annual raises and a 5 percent rollbacks on current contracts
• Allow each team to release one player via the so-called “amnesty” clause and gain both salary-cap and luxury-tax relief when that player’s cap number is removed from the books