Here's the explanation that I recieved in an email from Larry Coon this morning: From Orlando's perspective, it was a simple "4-for-3" swap, combining the outgoing values of Howard, Gaines, Lue and TMac to be able to receive the combined incoming values of Francis, Mobley and Cato. From Houston's standpoint it was broken down into three separate trades, completed simultaneously. They used their TPE from the Glen Rice trade (about $7 million) to accept Howard and Lue. The combined salaries of Cato & Mobley were used to accept TMac's salary. That left them trading Francis for nothing, which generated a new TPE. (My friend Don Jones at RealGM.com provided the details on how this trade parsed out.) Of course, he got his info from Don Jones, so it's pretty much the same as on RealGM. My contention was that you couldn't break a simultaneous trade (or simultaneous part of a trade) into multiple pieces from our perspective and still have it be a single trade from the other teams perspective. My reasoning is that there is nothing in the CBA that gives you the right to do that. Jones is saying that it is allowed and Coon goes along with him. So, if it's not in the CBA, then where are these trade rules defined?
ESPN is also reporting that the Rockets got a TE from the McGrady deal (which they might use to get Deke): http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/clubhouse?team=hou
So I guess we can "recycle" the TE every year, so long as we do one multiplayer trade per year involving roughly the same salaries?
Unless we change our mind, and want to use the $6.99 TE from the Rice trade. Or have we already lost that exception? This would bring up an interesting point. I think it is agreed that we could have done the entirety of the McGrady deal without using an exception. But did we have to declare that we were using an exception at the time of the deal, to get the new TE? In other words, suppose we saw the market value drop for Dampier, and wanted to trade a pick to GS for Dampier in a sign and trade for a contract starting at $6.99 million per year? Is it too late - have we lost that larger TE?
did you say that to Larry? What did he say? I agree. There is nothing in the CBA that says any of this, where did they get this idea? This is why I said Don's original post was wrong on face, but yet, I have learned to give those guys a huge benefit of the doubt. Are they saying that this is purely their interpretation, or are they saying they have confirmation that trades don't have to be using the same Exceptions from different sides of the trade? This stuff frustrates me to no end. I mean, we've been talking about how both sides of the trades have to be operating on the same exceptions forever. Now we get this out of nowhere, with Don talking like it was known forever by the FAQ contributors.
