Are the Charlotte Hornets over the apron in 2026-27?

No. The Hornets are under both aprons for 2026-27, with $22.1M of room before the first.

This includes a projected signing that is not yet official, so these figures are an estimate.

Apron payroll

$186.9M

Unlikely bonuses

$500K

First apron

$209.0M ($22.1M)

Second apron

$221.7M ($34.7M)

Their apron payroll (contracts, dead money, drafted rookies, and unlikely incentives) is $186.9M, against a first apron of $209.0M and a second apron of $221.7M. Their apron payroll counts $500K in unlikely bonuses, incentive money a player probably won't earn that counts against the aprons but not the cap or tax.

Staying under the aprons preserves the full toolkit: the full mid-level, the bi-annual exception, and sign-and-trade flexibility. Several of those tools hard-cap a team at an apron once used, which is why the margins matter.

The rule behind this

The first apron is a spending line a few million above the luxury tax. Crossing it costs a team roster-building tools rather than just money: no acquiring players via sign-and-trade, no full mid-level exception (only the smaller taxpayer MLE), no bi-annual exception, no signing buyout players who earned more than the MLE, and trades must return salary within 110% of what goes out.

What is the first apron? →What is the second apron? →What is the hard cap? →What are unlikely bonuses? →

Numbers come straight from the live Hornets cap sheet, recomputed whenever the data updates.