The NBA and the Players' Union just agreed on a new CBA. With the salary cap raised and length of contracts reduced, how will these changes have any ramification on the Rockets, let's talk about it. It's our CBA experts' (like Nike) time to shine.
As I understand it, one year only: a player can be waived to save on lux tax. Therefore, Houston or Penny could be waived, or Rose, C-Webb maybe, or some others. There may be opportunities to p/u a good player cheap. Does Houston have 15 good minutes/game in him for the vet's minimum?
http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=ford_chad&id=2091803&num=5 ...each team will be given a one-time option this summer to waive one player from its roster and receive luxury tax relief. The team will still have to pay the player and his salary will still count against the cap, but the team won't have to pay a luxury tax on his salary. For example, the Knicks' Allan Houston might a candidate to be waived because of this rule.
wow, if that's really in there, that's a very interesting rule. though the line of teams wanting to pay a guy not to play for them and have him count against the cap just to avoid the LT can't be that long. but i could be underestimating that. houston would be a perfect candidate but would even someone like kvh get waived by his team since he still sort of plays decently?
Oh. They still count against the cap. I would say Allan Houston is gone, regardless. I think there is a good chance that JVG will want to pick him up.
Does that mean we could have kept Maurice Taylor, used him in the playoffs and dumped him now instead of having to watch Moochie and Baker rot on the bench this season?
Players don't care. Maurice Taylor will get paid whether the Rockets kept him or dumped him. The Rockets would have to pay him no matter what. It's just that if they waived him, he wouldn't be in the books and count against the salary cap.
we're not even in luxury tax territory right now so what good would it do us? and moochie and vin are important expiring contracts for trading purposes right now. how long will it take people to figure that out. dumping mo gives us no trading ability. and we have to pay him. and, macfan, he still counts against the cap. however, i'm somewhat skeptical this is actually in the cba. this seems like a really weird thing for them to put in there.
Okay if I'm reading this correctly, this exempted player salary from the luxury tax thing is a one time occurance. Teams can only do it with one player, this summer. They waive the player, and the salary stays on the cap, but in terms of computing the luxury tax, the player's salary is exempt. HOLY LOOPHOLES BATMAN. This means that if we waived T-mac, we could then resign him at the minimum or LLE and then his big contract wouldn't apply to the luxury tax. This means that the team actually has a max contract "buffer" away from the luxury tax. So the team payroll could conceivably be 70-80 million and the LT still wouldn't kick in. Of course, there are a couple of problems with this maneuver: 1. A waived player can been claimed by any team that has the cap space to sign him. And you better believe that if T-mac was waived, that Cleveland, Atlanta, and the Clippers would be falling over themselves trying to claim T-Mac first. 2. The more insidious scenario involves those teams not claiming T-mac. Then T-mac could conceivably perpetuate the biggest backstab in the history of sports. A backstab that would make the whole Boozer fiasco look like a favor. T-Mac could clear waivers, and then SIGN a max deal with any team that has the cap space, and basically be paid as if he was on TWO max contracts. That would be the most devastating scenario of all because his original contract would still be on the Rockets cap. 3. Even if we do get this to work, and T-mac doesn't backstab us by signing with somebody else, the league could still put the brakes on such a deal. They could say that we are circumventing the Luxury Tax, and declare that we can't do this. Or say that the waived player cannot re-sign with their original team. This thing is probably too risky to do it with T-mac. But I can imagine the Heat doing this with Shaquille, because I don't think there's any teams out there with $30 million in cap space lying around. This is if the league doesn't put in the "you can't re-sign with your original team" rule.
If it is possible to waive a guy, exempt the salary from the tax and then re-sign them, then maybe we should do this with Juwan. If another team claims him off waivers, then who cares. We'd probably prefer to have him off our books. Otherwise we could re-sign him to a multi-year deal at the minimum and as long as he was a productive player for us, it would be a benefit if we go over the LT by bringing in high salary players. The thinking is like this. Juwan is a good player for us. Not perfect, but productive. Now if we think of that contract as unmovable (which it probably is), then we can do this move, and trade for a bunch of players go into LT territory with a buffer. Because since Juwan's contract was unmovable, he would have been on our books regardless of these moves. But now we get Juwan AND a salary tax buffer. To break it down another way, if we land a max player like Jason Kidd for example, and in this scenario we aren't able to get rid of Juwan's contract. We would have Kidd, T-mac and Yao's max contracts and Juwan's $6 million contract. Now Juwan's 6 mill might be the difference between paying the tax or not. If we do this whole waive exemption thing, then we have 3 max contracts and Juwan's $1 million contract counting towards the luxury tax. So maybe it doesn't end up triggering. Now the only problems with this scenario are: A. Once again, the backstab situation. If Juwan signs with another team it would basically negate the whole reason to do this. Then we don't get a productive player and he just eats up our cap room for the next 4 years. B. If Juwan is in fact tradeable, then we gave him a "minimum" raise for no reason. Although this does open up Juwan's value as a trade commodity because he'd be on a cheap contract. Of course that makes things even more complicated in determining whether this "loophole" is worth it. Too bad we don't have any truly useless players with long contracts. Then this decision would be a slam dunk to make.
we aren't over the LT number so it doesn't effect us. we won't be dumping anyone. i don't even think houston will be let go by the knicks because his ending contract will be worth a lot since its huge and the knicks don't care about being over the LT. look for teams that are just a little over the LT to dump someone of little importance to get just under the LT.
But the way I read it, the LT exception lasts for the length of the contract. Or else who would want to eat the salary for a couple of years, to get one year of LT relief. This means that we could go into LT territory in the future. Definitely risky, but worth thinking about.
It'll be interesting to see who the Rockets send to the NBDL. The Bad Man, VSpan, free agent rookies, or would this encourage JVG to use 24 on a youngster he can send to the minors? Or will this new rule mean teams above the Rockets will take chances on youngsters with higher potential that they can send to the NBDL, which in turn means more experienced players will be available to the Rockets at 24? Question...teams are now required to carry a minimum of 14 active players on the roster, there is no longer an IL, but what is the total roster number of active plus inactive players...still 15 or what ???
I seriously doubt Les will waive anyone to save Lux Tax considering he has never paid it and probably never intends to either. I think the #24 pick is now interesting, it might open the Rockets up to taking a younger less ready player. But then I still don't see it for this year. Sounds like Badman & Spanman should come over and fill the 13th & 14th roster spots. Or at least go to the NDBL.
I am not sure how interested Eurpoean players will be with the NBDL. Darko said recently if he was drafted and then was asked to go to the NBDL he would have rather stayed in Europe. I wonder if other European players feel that way? American players, especially those 2nd rounders probably will jump at the chance to play in teh NBDL to show their worth. But the Euros might just be comfortable staying in Europe unless they KNOW they will be on the "big league" team.
