Kobe and Shaq make the Lakers' salary cap together. I'm not sure if we can keep this team together with two players signing the max.
Kobe and Shaq's contracts were signed previous to the new CBA, and as such are not bound by the rules which put caps on salaries. In a few years, Bryant will probably be making more than Francis and Yao combined, because of this.
http://rockymountainnews.com/drmn/nuggets/article/0,1299,DRMN_20_1714521,00.html "(Leslie) Alexander said the franchise would always look for deals that might improve the team, but he said the luxury tax threshold remains a line the Rockets would not cross."
I'm not sure why we'd want to but the answer is "yes". The only catch being that if the new contract is larger than his current contract (120% is what I recall since Posey is on his rookie contract), then he becomes a Base Year player and impossible to trade to a team over the cap w/o a third under the cap team involved for salary matching.
Puedlfor - I do not believe this is correct. When Shaq, Zo, Grant Hill, and Garnett (among others) have their old contracts expire, they will be subjected to the ceiling max %ages of the current CBA. The current CBA did not "grandfather" the extentions...only the prior contract lengths and values. Kobe's contract this year is $12.4m and will go to a little over $14m in two seasons. While he will make more than Steve and Yao together when they are on their rookie contracts, I do not believe this will be the case once both are extended and maxed. What may also limit Kobe is the fact that the Laker owner is on record as to not wanting to pay the LT. He may arm wrestle with Kobe to avoid the dollar for dollar hit. For the 2004-2005 season, Shaq, Kobe, Fox, Fisher and Madsen (team opt) have a combined salary of $54.2m.
Come on even with their recent good play, you can't deny that Moochie, Cato and Mo Taylor are OVERPAID.
That was reported in the Chron but they didn't quote Alexander. They just stated that this was, as of now, company policy. Pay in the NBA is relative. Overpaid compared to what? Here's a PARTIAL list... Player - Years/Millions Vin Baker - 7/87 Kerry Kittles - 6/52 Travis Knight - 7/23 Clarence Weatherspoon - 5/27 Shandon Anderson - 6/42 Howard Eisley - 7/41 Derrick Coleman - 5/40 Todd MacCulloch - 6/34 Jahidi White - 5/25 Alan Henderson - 7/45 Tyrone Hill - 5/38 Jason Caffey - 7/35 Jerome Williams - 7/41 Raef LaFrentz - 7/70 Lorenzen Wright - 7/42 Malik Rose - 7/42 Chris Mills - 7/34 Danny Fortson - 7/38 Tom Gugliotta - 6/59 That's a PARTIAL list. A LOT of guys are getting "overpaid" relatively speaking.
kobe's contract is old cba??? i believe this is his 7th season, meaning he had played 2 full seasons before the lockout and new cba. he couldn't possibly have signed an extension that fast could he?? as for grandfathering old contracts, i'm pretty sure they can. i know shaq signed a 3 yr/88.5 million extension and there has been lots of talk on what kind of dollar figures kg could get with a maximum 7 yr extension (i think $300M over the 7 years). so unless you mean something else, they can have salary increases based on the old contracts, not based on the new cba. edit: so looked it up, kobe signed for 6 yr/71 million which was the max allowable under the new cba. so a new question. people who signed under the new cba, when there extensions run out, does the next extension start at a certain percentage of the cap like it does now, or does it start at a certain percentage increase from the last year of the previous extension??
Les won't lose James Posey -- he is the glue that every championship team needs. For example, Mario Ellie didn't do that much -- or did he? Key shots, key steals, toughness...the list goes on. J-Po is the present day Junkyard Dog, i.e., key steals, fast breaker, timely stuffs, tough defender...you know. He deserves $$ just like the other starters.
I think you answered your own question without realizing it when you looked up Kobe's extention which was limited %age wise by the current/new CBA (although his original contract pre-dates the current CBA). From that, I deduce that extentions of current contracts will be limited to the max %age allowable of whatever CBA is (or will be) in effect when the extention occurs.
