I thought his contract is 5M 5M 15M, how about it changes to 8M? I understand it's the sum of all three and divide by 3. But why is that?
His salary is $5 million, but the $8M number is how the cap hit is balanced out. His impact on the Rockets' cap is $8.3M. If he was traded, that cap hit is $8.3M annually for the receiving team as well. One thing I'm a little unclear on though is if, hypothetically, Lin was traded, how salary responsibility is handled. I assume the receiving team is responsible for the remainder (which is $15 million in 2014-15).
If he's traded it's still 8.3 over the remainder of the contract. No offense, but I don't get how people are still confused over this. It's been discussed thousands of times in this forum.
The Gilbert Arenas rule, because they only had Early Bird rights, where the max if over the cap you can match is the mle, the hit for the original team was set so they could actually match, hence 5/5/15 However the offer sheet team, ie us, it's set so that you can't use the balloon to circumvent the cap (ie if we had only had $5m cap room), so instead it's averaged for us.
I understand the cap hit situation for Lin and Asik applies to 29/30 teams, but not for the original team they were on when given the chance to re-sign them as RFAs. That was at the point in time when we made the offer. BUT, if we were to trade Asik to CHI now, or Lin to NYK now, would their cap hits be $8 million, or $15 million? Does the timing of the trade now change the cap situation? This is only regarding a trade back to their original team.
The 5/5/15 only applied if their old teams had matched. Since they didn't match it would be 8.3 if we traded them back to those teams. A team acquires a player at whatever that players cap hit was to the Team that you acquire them from. So if Chicago had matched on Asik and later traded him then his cap hit to the new team would have been 5/5/15.
I know the cap hit is 8.3 million, but its not clear if we trade Lin if the other team will have to pay his 15mil salary his final season. That could make him less attractive.
It's not really unclear. Once NY didn't match, Lin's contract was locked in at salaries of 5/5/15 and a cap hit of 8.3/8.3/8.3. That's exactly what it would be for any team we traded him to. If NY had matched then his cap hit to them would have been 5/5/15 to the Knicks. Whether they matched or not his actual salary is 5/5/15.
Bingo! (Not that I need to verify aelliott's posts. They're almost universally nails.) Once New York/Chicago didn't match, the contract terms were set. One third of the total contract amount applies against the cap for each of the three years of their contracts ($8,374,646 each year). The payments, however, are different than the cap hit ($5,000,000 in 2012-13, $5,225,000 million in 2013-14 and $14,898,938 in 2014-15). These terms apply to any team that trades for either player, so the acquiring team would have to pay that large third-year salary.
If he does get traded, the receiving team will probably ask for cash also to offset his last year's salary.
Just to followup if Lin or Asik are traded does their contract become an 8.3 million dollar expiring or a 15 million dollar expiring contract? Basically the cap number or the cash payout number.
The cap number is what other teams would be concerned with when looking at a player as an expiring contract.
