I think you're reading too much into this, heyp. The "Room" Exception is intended only for teams that otherwise would not have been eligible for the MLE or BAE under the prior CBA. Example: Team A would have $6M in available cap room IF it renounced its free agents' rights. Those free agents' cap holds add up to $7M. Instead, Team A decides to use the MLE on an outside free agent and to re-sign its own free agents to deals totaling over $6M. After all was said and done, Team A was able to field a team with a payroll approx. $9M above the salary cap. Meanwhile, Team B has $10M in available cap room. It renounced its free agents' rights and signed a top outside free agent. After all was said and done, Team B was only able to field a team with a payroll right at (but not above) the salary cap. In simple terms, the "Room" Exception is intended to help all the "Team Bs" out there, not the "Team As". Just to be clear: The "Room" Exception will not preclude any NBA team from being able to use the MLE or BAE that could have used it under the prior CBA. The "Room" Exception is merely a "consolation prize" to teams that could not (under either the prior CBA or the new CBA) use the MLE or BAE.
^ yeah, gotcha. See my previously post. I wasn't really overthinking, just not trusting that the media was using the correct definition of cap room. I just wanted clarification on how people are defining "Salary Cap Room," because the media often times doesn't use the strict CBA definition.
Keep in mind that this is MY interpretation of the rule. Even the league's official proposal doesn't spell anything out in great detail (a la Larry Coon's FAQs). However, this interpretation appears to be the correct one, as it is consistent with the league's other points about not allowing any team taking advantage of the "full" MLE or the BAE to then exceed the luxury tax. As Ken Berger points out in his running lockout updates today, the intent of that provision is not necessarily to impose a de facto hard cap on those teams; rather, it is to avoid the inevitable slew of teams looking to exploit the loophole of timing its use of the MLE to come BEFORE re-signing their own free agents. In simple terms: the league's rule avoids cheating. That said, I would be in favor of some middle ground to cover teams that do not INTEND to cheat the system but otherwise find themselves able to compete for a championship if they just add that one extra piece at the trade deadline that might catapult them over the tax threshold. In those instances, I'd like to see some alternative where that team COULD exceed the tax threshold. So, instead of there being an express prohibition, perhaps that team loses its MLE the following year. Seems fair enough.
