I fail to see how this is enforceable
In terms of punishment, salary cap/MLE/draft pick punishments hurt more than monetary fines.
Presumably they hope that randomly selecting teams for audits will help enforce that (“Why were you calling this agent who doesn’t represent any of your players in May, but does represent that player you signed in July?”).
And a fine of up to $10 million is substantial. Salary negotiations frequently break down over that amount of money, so it’s reasonable to believe that would ward off many instances of tampering. The league always has the right to move draft picks from one team to another, and I doubt they’re getting rid of that, but money talks — second round picks get sold for far less than $10 million, for instance. They probably can’t impose salary cap penalties without getting union sign off, because that could restrict how much money goes to the players.
Why were you calling this agent who doesn’t represent any of your players in May, but does represent that player you signed in July? Because he also represents a player in the upcoming draft we wanted to schedule a workout with (before draft) or want to talk about joining our summer league team (after draft).
Except for Durant's agent (Rich Kleiman) I think everybody represents several players. A quick browsing down list of agents on Real GM shows me Philly could call Jason Glushon (Horford) about Dedric Lawson (2019 draft, undrafted). Boston could call Javon Phillips (Kemba) about Amir Coffey (2019 draft, undrafted), and you could do the same for just about anybody. And half the agents probably don't need to do this charade because they already have other players on the team (like Lakers could talk to Rich Paul about "LeBron" but then really talk about Anthony Davis).
I feel like anybody who works in the corporate world knows there's some things you just don't talk about over email/text, things you don't want in writing, this will be no different. Email/text an agent to set up a meeting to talk about one player and then just talk about another. The NBA is just telling agents/teams to get rid of the smoking guns and cover their tracks (which they probably were already doing pretty well).
A requirement that a team report, within 24 hours, any instance of an agent or player representative asking for a benefit that is not allowed under the salary cap or collective bargaining agreement ("unauthorized benefits")
New channels for teams and team employees to anonymously report rules violations or tampering
I just can't see this happening. Too few agents control too many players. And since most free agents are only dealing with a few teams, won't be hard to figure out which team snitched, in which case have fun signing another free agent.
If the NBA wants to get rid of tampering, I think the penalties need to go the other way too. Any agent caught involved in tampering needs to be banned from the league (ok maybe a little harsh, but I'm sure we could come up with something scalable: maybe severe fine for 1st offense, not allowed to sign new clients for 3 years for 2nd offense, 1 year ban for 3rd offense, lifetime ban after that?).
One of the podcasts that came out over the summer (probably Lowe Post) made it sound like most teams tried to play by the rules, but it was the agents pushing it. Like if you don't discuss the specifics about my player with me now (in June), he's already going to be off the market when free agency starts.