Ok I think I'm getting it. Even if we magically right now dumped a max contract like Durant on some team with cap space and moved way below the line we shouldn't have crossed, it does not lift the restrictions THIS season on trades and signings. Since we've been hard capped, we will now have these restrictions the rest of the season no matter what we do. Is that accurate? And the main problem with this is that if we trade someone out, we can only take back the same amount or less. But why is that a problem? Can we not trade say Steven Adams for a PG making $12m or less?
Nothing makes these restrictions "go away" They did two things this offseason which triggered the restriction at the 1A. `1) the sign and trade of Clint Capela 2) the use of the Non Taxpayer version of the MLE on DFS. Because of those moves, they are hard capped at the 1A for the full season - they cannot at any time exceed that 1A.
It will come in handy if we have to shuffle things around and move someone like Capella at the last minute.
There's no reason not to apply for the DPE, even if the likelihood of using it is very small. The restriction on the DPE is that it must be used by the end of this league year, and can't be used to acquire someone with any years remaining on their contract (since it's a "replacement player", it needs to be used on an expiring). A little maneuver they should be able to do with the DPE is to convert it to a traded player exception, which has a 365 day rolling expiration date, meaning it would be available next year, by making a 1:1 swap with another team. Purely for illustration purposes, let's assume that the Rockets traded Clint Capela ($6.7M) for Tyus Jones ($7M). Let's ignore Tyus Jones' NTC, and the fact that I doubt they want Capela with Jonathan Isaac on their bench already. From the Magic side of the deal, it would be a 1-for-1 swap, dropping $300k in salary this year. From the Rockets side of the deal, they could structure it as two transactions: The DPE for Tyus Jones, and Clint Capela for nothing in return (generating a $6.7M trade exception). The net salary increase would still keep them below the apron hard cap. Personally, I always felt like Capela's role was to be a walking trade exception during the next two years; a useful enough player that you'd want to have in case of a Steven Adams injury, but more importantly, a small tradeable salary that could be used for salary matching. If the Rockets can turn him into a trade exception and dump his salary without attaching significant draft compensation this year, that would be a pretty slick use of the DPE.
