I'm just getting ready to start my eighth season as GM and there isn't a single team under the cap. That's not unusual, but there are twenty teams paying excessive luxury taxes. Something seems amiss. Take Atlanta for example: Their payroll is $280.1 million, which is $131.4 million OVER the cap and they are paying $98.7 million in luxury tax. They have a payroll which is nearly double the current cap of $148.7 million. Being over the cap is one thing, but there seems to be far too many teams that are excessively over the cap and I can't imagine this a good thing.

Should I increase the cap manually or simply keep playing?

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TEAMS PAYING LUXURY TAX
Team | Tax (Millions)
 MIN | $5.9
 MIL | $12.0
 WAS | $12.8
 PHO | $13.2
 NYK | $14.2
 TOR | $17.8
 PHI | $26.9*
 SAS | $28.8*
 DAL | $34.2*
 ORL | $37.0*
 UTA | $37.4*
 IND | $41.0*
 DET | $44.4*
 NOP | $46.3*
 MIA | $47.4*
 LAC | $57.3*
 CHA | $58.4*
 CLE | $78.6*
 SAC | $81.3*
 ATL | $98.7*

* - Team salary exceeds $200 million, the current cap is $141 million.

I was digging into this a little more and now I'm a little confused. The Atlanta Hawks CONTRACTS page the Team Salary is displayed as $280,185,835, but there are only nine players on the roster and the Total Salary below the player list shows it as $167,807,556. Is this because I haven't reached "Free Agency" yet and those FA salaries are still being counted?

Yes if you havent gone past the stage where the AI is going to renounce contracts then all those cap holds are still on the books