HP, Yes technically, you can reduce salary as you mentioned. But, realistically, it's not going to help us this year. We're talking about freeing up enough money to sign a player after we sign Webber. Those scenarios aren't going to help much. Here's what I mean. 1. 15% differnce- Let's assume you traded off Williams, Cato, Rogers, Thomas and Collier all for draft picks. First of all, that would be almost impossible to do, but let's say we did. You would only have freed up $2.29M and you're not going to sign a free agent with that kind of money when most teams in the league are sitting on a $4.5M exception. 2. Trade Exception - There's only three teams in the league that are over the cap and have a trade exception (WAS $1.47M, LAL $3M, and DEN $564K). You'd have to make multiple deals, to get enough cap space to be meaningfull. Teams under the cap that have an exception want to maximize their cap space. With the Luxury tax kicking in, teams over the cap aren't going to take on extra salary unless you're pretty sure that your getting a player that will make a difference. Somebody, might take a shot on Cato, but unless you can convice Detroit or LAL to take on Walt Williams, you're still not going have enough to do anything. 3. No 15% on minimum salary players - We won't have any minimum salary players under contract this offseason. So, again, you are correct that there are other ways to reduce salary. An additional way would be to buy out the final year of Carlos Rogers or Walt Williams contracts, but that's not likely to happen either. Realistically, if we were able to sign Webber, we'd need to dump salary to a team with cap space in order to sign a free agent. ------------------
aelliott, what about sending Walt + a pick (if Hou wants to truly cut cap) to Miami for Ced (whose contract expires a few weeks after draft night) + a future pick? There are ways of doing it... it just depends on the other team playing. ------------------
Aelliott is right, realistically. I concur. I was just having fun being mister technical for once. Technically, there are several ways to reduce our cap more than Davo's realistic numbers of just calculating the Dream windfall.
How much "value" will the cap space of teams such as the Bulls and Clippers have to other teams this summer? Mango ------------------ Spring Cleaning!!!
Ha! Caught aelliott in heypartner-esque laziness. Mango, if aelliott would have given you his full answer, it would be: Technically no, for three reasons: 1. The 15% rule can produce a lot of cap space in high salary trades. For instance, the Pippen trade had roughly a $1.9m difference based soley on the fact any team can go 15% higher in team salary (meaning the other goes down 15%). Example, we could unload Walt and Cato on someone and reduce team salary by 15% of their combined salaries (roughly $1.5m) 2. The other team can have a trade exception to eat even more than a 15% difference. Example: We could have traded Mo' before the trade deadline for a draft pick to anyone with a trade exception of at least $2m. Note that these scenarios produce trade exceptions only when we are above the cap. In fact, the timing of when they occur is irrelevant as long as we eventually get way under the cap. That is to say, exceptions convert to FA cap room the moment team salary is reduced below the combined value of the exceptions. 3. Teams can acquire any minimum-salary player without regard to the 15% rule. Example, teams could trade a 10-yr vet making the minimum ($1.0m) for a 2nd-round draft pick and thus reduce team salary by $1.0m. [This message has been edited by heypartner (edited February 27, 2001).]
Is it possible to sign Hakeem first for the minimum then offer Webber the max? Wasn't that the scenario that Barkley have in signing Pippen? But of course, down the road we have to compensate Hakeem if he performs great and contributes to a championship. ------------------
aelliott, I'm pretty sure you are correct about when contracts expire. Players can be traded at the end of the season, unless their team is still playing in the playoff(which of course means their season isn't over). Would you agree that trades can resume as soon as a team's season ends. But, any free agent maneuvers like "sign-n-trades" are not allowed until Aug 1st.
what about sending Walt + a pick (if Hou wants to truly cut cap) to Miami for Ced (whose contract expires a few weeks after draft night) + a future pick? Achebe, I was under the impression that contracts expired after the last game of the season. Under that scenario, Miami couldn't trade Ceballos. I'll try to find out for sure. ------------------
I thought that we got our exceptions back the moment we were over the cap. Say we sign Webb for our max cap space, resign Shandon with the early bird, thus putting us over the cap. Now we have the exceptions. Am I wrong in understanding it that way? ------------------
aelliott, That kind of blows. It seems then there are only 3 cap liberating trade scenarios then for the Rockets: 1) 15% + $100,000.00 trades. 2) Sending players to teams w/ space (which draft night should only include LAC and CHI since other teams will be unable to renounce their players until later, is that true???) 3) Trading for players w/ team options. Damn, not being able to trade for players whose contracts expire this summer is a serious limitation. One cool thing is that Davis has a player option, his contract doesn't expire. I wonder if Walt + Carlos + a couple of firsts on draft night would do it (Orlando should pay, Milwaulkee definitely will). Of course, Hou would have to know for sure that Davis would stay in Houston. ------------------
Achebe, I reposted aelliott's earlier response since I have very little clue about the cap myself. Sorry for the misunderstanding. ------------------ I am an invisible man.
I thought that we got our exceptions back the moment we were over the cap. Say we sign Webb for our max cap space, resign Shandon with the early bird, thus putting us over the cap. Now we have the exceptions. Am I wrong in understanding it that way? That's not how it works. Once you lose the exception it is gone for the season. ------------------ [This message has been edited by aelliott (edited March 01, 2001).]
