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When the clock strikes midnight on Friday, the NBA contracts will be flying off the shelves

Welcome to one of the great accidents in sports history -- a one-time mega-leap in the salary cap that will unleash an orgy of confused spending. This is Year 2 of a three-year earthquake during which the NBA's salary cap will nearly double from $63 million to around $110 million, with almost half of that bump coming in this single outlier free-agency period.

Teams still aren't quite sure what will happen or how they might exploit the chaos. A year ago, with most of the jump still looming, they could at least be sure almost every long-term contract would soon look like a bargain.