Garf wrote:Silly question: so the Knicks now must be able to match every theoretical offer for Lin with the Early Bird Exception? Arenas still applies? What would be the max contract?
The first-year salary of an offer sheet cannot be greater than the Non-Taxpayer Mid-Level exception, which this year is $5M. The original team can use either the NTMLE (if available) or the EBE to match.
The second-year salary equals the first-year salary plus 4.5%.
Today Houston offered Lin $5M in the first year and $5.225M in year two.
The third-year salary is limited by the maximum amount that the player would have been eligible to receive in that year. Since Lin was offered $14.898M, I'll assume that's what the league determined his maximum salary would be in 2014-15.
The CBA says that the players salary for any subsequent year can increase by no more than 4.1% of the third-year salary. Therefore, the most Lin could have been offered in year four would have been $15,508M.
That of course assumes that team offering Lin a max offer sheet has $10,158M in available cap room this year, the average of the $40,631M total of the four-year max offer sheet.
