ESPN Insider: Cap May Keep Kobe In a Lakers Uni...

By Chad Ford
ESPN Insider

The NBA salary cap is about to rear its ugly head again ... will it keep the Clips from signing Kobe Bryant?

A league source told Insider this afternoon that the preliminary salary cap number for the 2004-05 season will be approximately $43.9 million. Official numbers won't be released to NBA teams until later this evening, but the source claims that the numbers, if they change at all, will only change slightly.

The 43.9 million figure is a little more than one million lower than what most teams were projecting and as low as two million below what several teams, including the Suns and Clippers, had anticipated.

The lower cap number, up just $100,000 from last season's cap, could deal a debilitating blow to the Clippers, who needed to get $14.175 million under the cap to sign Bryant to a max contract.

As it stands now, the Clippers have $11.272 million in cap room. That means that the most the Clippers can offer Kobe is a six-year, $84.4 million contract. The Lakers, on the other hand, can offer Bryant a seven-year contract worth $136.4 million.

The Clippers do have options however. They could attempt to trade a player or two to a team with cap space in an effort to get further under the cap. If the team traded Melvin Ely ($1.75 milion) and Chris Wilcox ($2.2 million) to teams with space, they could get far enough under the cap to sign Bryant to a six-year, $106.3 million deal -- the most any other team can sign him too.

While that's a lot to give up, you can be the Clippers will do it in a heartbeat to land Kobe. Still, even the maximum the Clippers can pay Kobe is $30 million less than what he can make from the Lakers.

The league has spent the past two weeks crunching numbers to determine what the cap should be next year. Today, the league sent the numbers to NBA Players Association for approval. Once they sign off on the numbers (the league was still making a few tweaks at 3:00 p.m. ET) they will become official. Teams having been waiting for two weeks to officially sign free agents while they waited for the league to come up with official numbers.

Among the other numbers that will impact the free agent process?

The mid-level exception is expected to come in at $4.95 million. Teams over the salary cap are given an extra $4.95 million to use to sign free agents. They can use it to sign one or multiple players.

A six-year contract for the full mid-level will be worth $37.125 million for teams signing another team's free agent. For team's resigning their own free agent, the full mid-level will be worth $38.9 million.

The source also claims that the luxury tax threshold will likely be approximately $55 million this year. Again, the figure is around a million dollars lower than what teams had anticipated. Teams that had a payroll in 2003-04 over $55 million will have to pay the league a dollar for dollar tax on every penny spent over the threshold.

If the $55 million figure holds true, nine teams will be tax payers this year. Who are they? The Knicks will have the highest tax bill, an estimated $32.2 million. The Mavericks ($25.8 million), Blazers ($25.3 million) and Timberwolves ($16.4 million) also have enormous tax bills. The Pacers ($2 million), Lakers ($7.3 million), Nets ($6.3 million), Sixers ($4.3 million) and Kings ($8.5 million) were the other taxpayers.

The news of a lower-than-expected cap doesn't really please anyone. It means that the league pulled in fewer revenues than they had predicted. It also means that players won't be able to earn as much in their free-agent contracts.

The only winner may be David Stern, who will use the low revenues to argue that fundamental changes need to be made to the new collective bargaining agreement that the league and players association are negotiating.