Huh? I thought we have no money this offseason. All the contracts come off next season, unless Cook decides not to trigger his player option, which there's no chance of him doing.
Where did you hear about this? I thought that the remaining luxury tax revenues not paid to teams under the tax threshold was used to fund NBA league programs.
^^^Also, I'm pretty sure that if the luxury tax rules were changed as you describe, teams wouldn't be so averse to crossing the tax threshold. It was being completely left out of luxury tax revenue sharing that kept the luxury tax as essentially a hard cap. Otherwise, going over the luxury tax by $1 only costs that team another $1. For THIS reason, I'll have to disagree with you, emjohn.
Artest's contract is about $8.5M, Luther Head is about $3M and Deke is about $2M. Those are the ones that should come off the books. Von Wafer will be a free agent and I think Scola may be a restricted FA this summer (though I'm not sure about that one). Von Wafer should be able to get the amount that was being paid to Head. So you could give Artest a contract worth the rest (which is what I imagine he will be looking for), or use it to fill the void. Would this team be better off signing Artest and hoping Dorsey can fill the spot at backup center, or try to use that money on FA's like Turkoglu and Mihm (to use an example of two player who may fit in that salary range)?
Okay, I got the answer from Larry Coon's FAQ. emjohn, it's not quite how you describe it. Here's how the luxury tax revenues are now distributed: --Each team that falls below the luxury tax threshold gets 1/30th of all luxury tax revenues. --All or some of the remainder of the luxury tax revenues may be used by the NBA for "league purposes." --IF (and this is the big difference) the league decides not to use the entire remaider of luxury tax revenues for league programs, THEN whatever small amount is left over is distributed to ALL teams in equal shares. emjohn, this means that the Knicks COULD possibly receive some luxury tax revenues back, but it would be miniscule in comparison to what the teams below the luxury tax threshold receive. Whatever amount that is, those other teams would receive the same amount ON TOP of the 1/30th of luxury tax revenues they receive to begin with. Hope this explains that issue.
We should have a MLE and LLE for use this summer, so we can get another role player, for example, a good backup center.
Here is some data from draftexpress, plus my guess where we will be: Name 2009/10 2010/11 Aaron Brooks $1,118,520 $2,016,691 Brent Barry $2,062,800 $0 Brian Cook $3,500,000 $0 Carl Landry $3,000,000 $3,000,000 Chuck Hayes $2,117,500 $2,301,250 Dikembe Mutombo $0 $0 Joey Dorsey $881,820 $947,140 Kyle Lowry $2,034,996 $2,975,165 Luis Scola $3,383,333 $0 Ron Artest $0 $0 Shane Battier $6,864,200 $7,354,500 Tracy McGrady $23,239,561 $0 Von Wafer $0 $0 Yao Ming $16,378,325 $17,686,100 Total $64,581,055 $36,280,846 The only reasonable option is to release Chuck Hayes, and save 2.3M. If Yao leaves early, we need to keep $26,529,150 to keep his bird rights. Assuming we want to keep Von Wafer and Ron Artest next summer and Luis Scola the next, is is probably reasonable that we will have less than 10M. I do not see getting Joe Johnson or anyone significant with that amount.
If we release chuck hayes, he still is on the books and we still have to pay him, releasing him does nothing....
For this Summer the Rockets best hope would be if the Pistons are $23M under the cap but that depends on what the cap will be set at. They then can substitute AI by trading for McGrady. The biggest obstacle would be the Rockets willing to salary dumping McGrady. DM & Les still think he's a superstar...
Sorry I was not clear. 2010/11 is a team option year. Also true for Landry and Brooks, but I assume we keep them.
