NBA Salary Cap Chat With Larry Coon 8/31/12

Larry Coon the noted author of the CBAFAQ, will answer your Salary Cap and Collective Bargaining Agreement questions. Larry will answers your questions about the Salary Cap, NBA trades and the new CBA at 3:00pm

  1. Azzar Nadvi

    whats up? i read that mark cuban said he was close to trading for kobe bryant. so close that he thought it was done at one point. that caught my interest. do you happen to know what kind of package he was offering for kobe bryant? do you know what other offers were being made for kobe bryant back in 2007 during “Doomsday in LA” or whatever they called it?

    • Larry Coon

      Nope. The Lakers play their cards pretty close to their vest, and when rumors of Laker deals leak, it’s almost always the other side of the trade that’s the source. The only deal that I heard about at the time that had any degree of legitimacy was with Chicago, but the two sides never got close enough to nail down a list of players. One problem was Kobe’s no-trade clause — he didn’t want to go to a decimated team, so the words was that he wasn’t going to approve a trade that included players like Luol Deng.

      I know that before Shaq was traded the Mavs put in a call, but were quickly rebuffed, with the Lakers telling them they didn’t have anything the Lakers were interested in.

  2. tapsilog

    Who would u draft and why, k.garnette or karl malone?

    • Larry Coon

      Both are MVPs and hall-of-famers, and Malone’s lack of titles is at least partially due to playing at the same time as Michael Jordan. You might say Malone due to being one of the least injury-prone athletes in the game, or Garnett due to his versatility. It’d be a toss-up.

  3. Wil

    Hi Larry, appreciate your insights. Overall, I think the CBA is working as intended, with NY showing restraint, LA going all-in now while they can, and NJ burning money to be relevant. But, I am hoping to move beyond the yearly free-agent circus that has been happening the last few years. Toward that end, what do you think of these suggestions for the next CBA: (1) 5 year for bird players, 4 years if under cap signed players, and 3 years for exceptions (to better position home teams and those under the cap); (2) 4 year extensions (as right now it is not beneficial to extend with current team); (3) 8% raises for own players and 4% for others (to keep a market advantage); (4) no more sign and trades (hate them!); and (5) no more front/back loading contracts (this isn’t football). My intent is to give players flexibility but also to make it beneficial to stay with your current team. Right now, I don’t feel there is enough incentive for a player to stay and too many gimmicks being used. You once mentioned that you need a level of complexity to deal with a complex environment, but at the same time, over complicating the system presents its own challenges.

    • Larry Coon

      The goal of the new CBA was to bring financial stability to the league, while allowing all 30 teams, if managed well, to be able to turn a profit AND compete for a title. The new CBA was a step in the right direction, but it fell short of the league’s goal. One of the objectives would be to promote teams’ ability to retain star players, and the new CBA didn’t really help that — note that since the new CBA took effect two superstar players (Chris Paul and Dwight Howard) were traded to big market teams, because their former teams knew they would lose them.

      Three changes I would have liked to see are as follows:

      1) The franchise tag. The owners wanted one, and the players didn’t, and this was negotiated out of the agreement. But this is really the only way to make sure that a superstar can stay. There are competing interests between player freedom of movement and team needs to retain star players, and I think superstars are the one case where teams SHOULD have the ability to say, “we built the franchise around you, we built all our marketing and identity around you, all of our other roster decisions were built with you in mind, and we need you to stay.” As long as the team is willing to compensate the player appropriately (say, with a full max contract and a no-trade clause), this would allow teams like New Orleans and Orlando an opportunity they clearly don’t have now. The other quid pro quo would be performance metrics — if, say, Orlando franchise tags Dwight Howard, then they have to make progress toward building a winner — they can’t just tag him and then fail to make progress thereafter. The mitigation to this problem would be in the form of an ETO should the team fail to meet certain performance metrics over time.

      2) Longer extensions. Right now, a player can sign for five years with Bird rights, or four years otherwise. Extensions allow only four years, and that includes the year(s) remaining on the current contract — so at most, a player can get three new seasons in an extension. The result is that players have much less incentive to extend — for example, you can be sure that Dwight Howard will become a free agent next summer, even if he fully intends to re-sign with the Lakers. If the league wants to encourage player retention, then they should promote extensions rather than free agency. The two should be equivalent — players should be allowed to add five new years if they will have full Bird rights when they are free agents, and four new years otherwise.

      3) As you said, eliminate sign-and-trade. They made progress on this issue, by making a sign-and-trade contract equivalent to a (non-Bird) free agent contract rather than a Bird contract. But still, it allows teams to spend money they don’t have. It’s like giving a teenager a credit card — pretty soon they will spend themselves into trouble.

  4. Delante

    Why are the Bulls’ so close to their hard cap when their payroll is much lower than the lakers?

    Also are there any moves the bulls can make to have about 10-12 mil cap space to obtain a sg by the end of this season?

    • Larry Coon

      In a nutshell, it’s because the Bulls are subject to the hard cap, and the Lakers aren’t.

      In the new CBA, taxpaying teams (technically, it’s teams more than $4 million over the tax line, but I’ll just say “taxpaying teams” here) have more restrictions on their exceptions than non-taxpaying teams. They have a smaller mid-level exception, they don’t get a bi-annual exception, and starting next season, they can’t receive a player in a sign-and-trade transaction.

      If a team uses an exception available only to non-taxpayers, they’re committed to being non-taxpayers. A team can’t, say, spend the full mid-level exception while under the tax line, then turn around and spend extra money and become taxpayers. So if a team uses the full mid-level or their bi-annual, their team salary can’t stray into tax territory for the remainder of that season — in other words, they’re hard capped.

      The Bulls used their Bi-Annual exception on Marco Belinelli, and the full Mid-Level (actually $3.941 million of it, which is enough) on Kirk Hinrich. By doing so, they committed to being non-taxpayers, and therefore have a hard cap for the remainder of the season (through next June 30).

      The Lakers were already way above the tax line, so they never had access to the exceptions available to non-taxpayers. They had no Bi-Annual exception, and only the $3.09 million Mid-Level for taxpaying teams. Since there was never any pretense of them acting like a non-taxpaying team, they are not subject to a hard cap.

      In other words, the Bulls made their bed, and now they have to sleep in it.

      If they want to clear $10-$12 million in cap space by the end of the season, their team salary would have to be $48 million or lower. Right now it’s at $73.5 million, meaning they’d have to shed about $25.5 million. I doubt that happens.

      Even if you meant clearing $10-$12 million under the hard cap, they’d have to shed at least $9-$11 million, which is a pretty tall order. I’m sure they’d love to clear space by trading Carlos Boozer, but other teams will be very reluctant to take on his massive contract.

  5. James

    I had a quick question, hypothetically what if ever team in the NBA happened to be in the luxury tax, how then would the tax money be split up?

    • Larry Coon

      There’s no requirement that any of the tax money go to non-taxpaying teams. If there’s ever a season where no team is under the tax line — as unlikely as this scenario may be — then 100% would be earmarked for league purposes. They could use it to further fund the revenue sharing program, they could do a supplemental distribution to all teams, or they could hold it until the next season — it’s up to them.

  6. G

    I’m not a fan of what Orlando got for dhoward but am I wrong to think that affalo can b flipped for a lottery pick… 2 yrs ago he was a hot up n coming player…a good defensive two guard with range

    • Larry Coon

      I think the Magic have a lot of options with Afflalo, including the ability to flip him for draft considerations.

  7. AJ

    Is it true that the new CBA could potentially punish the Thunder worse than it could punish the Lakers? (ie Thunder may lose Ibaka or Harden)

    • Larry Coon

      The new CBA helped spread the competitive balance, but it didn’t fix all the problems. Teams like the Lakers will continue to be able to outspend teams like the Thunder, because they have so much more revenue coming in, and can afford the exorbitant luxury tax. The Thunder don’t have that option.

  8. kasey

    do you see chris paul staying with the clippers past this season? i dont see. he is easily a top 5 player in the nba in his prime and just cant see him accepting the back page to the lakers the rest of his career

    • Larry Coon

      I think the Clippers needed to do everything they could to convince Paul to stay beyond this season. Instead they got what I think is a pretty poor fit at SG in Jamal Crawford, Lamar Odom who’s a complete crap shoot, and Grant Hill who’s just about to get his AARP letter. In addition they let Neil Olshey walk, and Andy Roeser & Vinny Del Negro are making all the decisions. They also need a better coach than VDN if they want to make a deep run in the playoffs, but won’t pay a competitive salary for a top coach. They let Ray Allen go to Miami without at least making a strong pitch — if for nothing else, then to show CP3 that they were doing all they can.

      None of this bodes well for the Clippers.

  9. Shayan

    What are the best free agents next year besides Dwight n cp3

  10. Chumpalump

    Seems many are high on the Memphis Grizzlies coming into the season, with arguments of a healthy Zach Randolph and a tough frontcourt. However, their bench looks awfully thin. They replaced OJ Mayo with Jarred Bayless = downgrade. And only have Mau Speights (doesn’t play defense) Haddidi, Pondexter, and Shelby (lets see if he can replicate Summer League) coming off the bench. And this is with an already thin/non-scoring backcourt in Tony Allen and Mike Conley. With that bench I can’t place them any higher than the #6 seed in the West this year. Over, under, or the same for you? Justify your decision.

  11. Charlie

    Golden State has to be the most unpredictable team for the upcoming season. If healthy they have enough talent to be as high as #6. With a couple of injuries, they could be as low as #11. Expectations were high last year too, only to crumble. Can’t just jump back on that bandwagon. How do you think they will do next year? And would you rank these three teams in terms of number of wins for next year: Golden State Warriors, Utah Jazz, Minnesota Timerwolves. Justify your decision. Thanks.

    • Larry Coon

      Justify my decision? Sounds like “Show all work” on a college math exam.

      I’ll tell you how many wins I picked for each of these teams in the ESPN forecast: Golden State: 29, Utah: 31, Minnesota: 34.

  12. Frank

    How much of an update at the PG is Mo Williams over Devin Harris? I heard on the highest mountain of the struggles of Harris last year, but if you compare their numbers – they are very similar. How well do you think we he do running the show in Salt Lake. Care to project a statline?

    • Larry Coon

      You’re right — their stats were pretty comparable (except for free throw percentage), but they were in different situations. Both faltered a little, but their roles were really different — the starting PG role was Harris’, while Williams shared the backcourt with Chris Paul, Chauncey Billups and Eric Bledsoe, and was used in a sixth-man role. If the Jazz hand the keys to Williams, I think he’ll have a solid season.