Buyouts remainder still counts against the cap. Just cash savings. https://www.blazersedge.com/2018/7/...ap-rules-waivers-stretch-contracts-luxury-tax
Idk man , he signed that deal right after being very close to finishing off the Warriors. As a competitive athlete there’s no way you think you don’t deserve that deal after opting in and risking your future and still having a competitive season. He opted in at $25M his first year, when his market value was over $40M ( clippers wanted to sign him to a max) , he risked his only shot ever at a new super max by opting in. He secured the bag the following year and will be able to provide for his family for life, which in my opinion is the smart move. If he knew he was declining then it’s even smarter to sign this deal. I mean as the president of the NBAPA he fought for these types of max contracts for his peers, might as well get what’s been due to him. Who is smarter To you , CP3 or Boogie? Do you respect Boogie more for Giving up guaranteed money for a CHANCE at winning? It’s not like they had some other star lined up to sign and CP3 didn’t want to sacrifice a few dollars from his contract to make the team better, what possible reason would he sign for less last year? To save the owner a few bucks, for flexibility ? There’s no guarantee of them getting another player, just like Demarcus was not guaranteed to get a ring.
I think OKC would be better off trying to find a trade partner. OKC is going to tank the next few years and need their cap space to absorb bad contracts with attached picks. Even if OKC attached say, 2 1st rounders, I think they could make that up in the long run pulling a HInkie and collecting more assets throughout the next few years. Maybe I'm partial because I don't want the Lakers to get him for nothing.
If OKC is smart, they wait for the season to start and pray he doesn't get injured. Let him go off, he will probably average around 18/10 on a bad team and it will increase his trade value. Then trade him at the deadline for a contending team that needs a PG with his value on the rise production wise.
There's little chance they buy out CP3 this season. What would be the point? They are only 2.5 million over the tax. To get under would be as easy as giving Ferguson away or a couple minimum contracts like Dialo, Noel, etc. Putting aside OKC's ability to attract free agents next year, there's almost no free agents worth the max in 2020-21 aside for ADavis. The list of prospective free agent is extremely sparse on stars. IF OKC was tanking, it'd make more sense for them to ship out Gallo for pick(s) than to trade CP3 and give away picks. Likewise keeping him, would make more sense than to have 24 million of dead salary for the next 3 years. Who knows, perhaps a team like the lakers or heat becomes desperate after Dec, when many more players/teams are eligible to be traded. Or perhaps CP3 has a rebound year or he is a positive influence/mentor for SGA and a young OKC team. They could move him the following year or the year after when he is an expiring. Many scenario are possible, but buying him out now would eliminate all the positive ones and immediately settle on one of the worst.
Don’t fault him at all for getting his money but had he taken less he’d be easier to fit into a contending roster. Another reason not to feel bad for him.
They also have no need to deal with the luxury tax any time soon. It is determined by total team salaries on the last day of the season. Grant was a no-brainer. Save $40M by trading a player in the last year of his contract (player option next year would be declined). But getting rid of cheap contracts like Ferguson would be stupid - he would still need to be replaced by a minimum salaried player, so it wouldn't save much luxury tax money. They can easily wait until the trade deadline. Someone in the playoff hunt will want either Gallinari, Noel or Muscala. Or if they are in the playoff hunt themselves, they could just eat the $5M in luxury tax knowing their repeater status will drop off the next year. I'm not even sure they can buy out CP3 with three years left on a contract. Even if he agreed to a 50% haircut, they'd be looking at an average of $20M in dead money each year for three years. If they stretched him, they would be out both $124M and have $17M in dead money for 7 years. They're not doing that. They will try to do the right thing for him if he doesn't want to stay but I doubt they buy him out unless he gives them a real sweetheart deal. He may be stuck there for most of the year and will need to show potential suitors that he isn't washed and last year was an aberration resulting from friction with Harden. if he can't do that, he might be in OKC for the rest of his career.
DUH! I warned them! http://bbs.clutchfans.net/index.php...-set-for-2016-espn.263395/page-2#post-9616393 http://bbs.clutchfans.net/index.php...k-he-hides-behind.292184/page-2#post-11863025 The players got hoodwinked by Lebron and CP3. The stars really screwed up the NBA.
Did they really, though? I agree the masses of players got screwed with more money going to the stars, but they are still getting paid more than market value. If there was no max contract, even more money would go to the top stars and less to everyone else. Beyond that, the NBA has more parity today than it's had in decades with a ton of two-star teams and no clear cut favorite to win the whole thing unlike most years. The bigger max contracts have made it harder for teams to put together a 3-star team without gutting the rest of the roster, so it's resulted in more overall talent distribution this year. There are 8-10 teams that no one would be shocked to see in the finals this year. These seem like good things for the NBA as a whole.
The cap smoothing is what the problem was. If they had done cap smoothing all of the players in the NBA would have gotten big chunks of money all of this time instead of crazy money to the people who were free agents that year and the long max deals for the 35+ gang. Lebron/CP3 had two primary focuses: rejecting cap smoothing and ensuring max deals for guys into their late 30s. Neither of those were helpful to the majority of NBA players.
They only thing I will say in defense of the Supermax gang is that, at least proportionally, their fraction of pay was always way way out of line with their on-court productivity.
Certainly all true - but the players voted those guys into their positions. They knew who they were being represented by and what their interests were. Also, for whatever it's worth, neither Lebron nor Paul really benefited from the lack of cap smoothing - they were getting the same money regardless, especially Paul who didn't sign his big deal until several years later when smoothing would likely have been mostly complete. It was all the random mid-tier and low-level free agents that benefited from the surge of money that one year. Since most lesser players sign 1-4 year deals, and many knew the big spike was coming up at least a year in advance, that's likely more than a third of the NBA vets that had the opportunity to be free agents that year. Also, no one made the Rockets sign Paul to his big deal. If it was as terrible a contract as people claim, the Rockets could have negotiated a lower deal. If other teams were willing to pay him the max, then that was simply his market value.
This. Perhaps they couls raise the lux tax level by 5 percentage points or something. That seems to be the thing preventing some players getting paid.
I'd hope that Morey tried to convince CP of taking a lower salary. From what I know, CP would've made less money w/ any other team. so ball was in Morey's court. The wink wink deal keeps being referenced as a reason to not low-ball CP, but would it hurt to ask him to take less? Apparently, yes.
Looking back, if they were willing to give up assets to get rid of CP, then that wink wink deal didn't really mean anything. They should have just negotiated a more reasonable contract with him. Or maybe it's Tilman insisting that the wink wink was Alexander's deal, not his.
As the president of NBPA and basically the main negotiator for a contract like he just signed, do you REALLY see him passing on that contract? He would send a very bad signal to the rest of players.