Cap Holds - Number of Rookie Minimum cap holds

[VeryMuchWoke]

"A cap hold called an "incomplete roster charge" if the team has fewer than 12 players (players under contract, free agents included in team salary, players given offer sheets, and first round draft picks). This charge is equal to the rookie minimum salary for each player fewer than 12" (From Cbafaq.com)

My question is, why must a team with 10 players accounted for have 2 of the above cap holds when they already have a cap hold accounting for the mid-level (or taxpayer mid-level) and, sometimes the bi-annual exception. It seems to me like worst case ("worst" meaning highest salary) they sign one player with the mid-level and one with the bi-annual. To me, this would make the rookie minimum cap holds, in a way, redundant.

Does anybody know the rationale for counting some of the salary twice? It would make more sense to me if there was either a cap hold for the MLE + Bi-annual (in the event that they have it) or a cap hold for the MLE (taxpayer or not) and one for the rookie minimum.

[DBoys]

Incomplete roster charges only matter to determine how much spending room a team has left.
- But a team who will be spending cap room will renounce their MLE and BAE in the process.

For teams calculating team salary for the apron, the unused MLE and BAE aren't included in whether they are over the apron or not, and incomplete roster charges aren't either.

So while on paper it looks like they might be double-charged, in real life it's not an issue.

[nodeal]

What about the MLE for Room Teams or Min exception?

Team has 10 players and 5m cap room plus .98036 held as a roster charge.
Team uses their cap room to sign a player.
Team uses their Room MLE to sign 2 players.
Team wastes .98036 in cap room

What is the point of the incomplete roster charge when you have these 2 exceptions to complete your roster?

[Dunkenstein]

We previously discussed the issue of roster charges in late June.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1023363

In this thread answerthink explained the rational behind the roster charge.

The roster charge concept exists to ensure that teams with cap space are thinking about their entire rosters when making player personnel decisions. It ensures that teams below the cap can complete their required 13 player minimum regular season rosters without exceeding the cap. Math dictates the way to do that is to stop the charges at 12.

[nodeal]

We previously discussed the issue of roster charges in late June.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=1023363

In this thread answerthink explained the rational behind the roster charge.

The roster charge concept exists to ensure that teams with cap space are thinking about their entire rosters when making player personnel decisions. It ensures that teams below the cap can complete their required 13 player minimum regular season rosters without exceeding the cap. Math dictates the way to do that is to stop the charges at 12.

I agree with your post more than that one

It may not make sense, but that's the rule.

The rule is really you must have 13 players on your roster before you go over the cap. So a charge is assessed to insure this happens. it doesnt really have anything to do with making sure a team is able to complete their roster.

[DBoys]

I'm not convinced that any of these explanations are all that great in explaining why, but the CBA is a document that says what must be done, rather than offering the why's.

What it mandates is that you have to account for a dozen salary slots, before you can spend the remainder of your cap room (if any) on a free agent. So a team fills in (at least) 12 slots with all the salaries plus all unrenounced holds, and then adds in whatever incomplete roster charges might be needed to get the total to 12 slots. Whatever cap room is left at that point can be spent on the next signee. Room MLE and minimum exceptions don't get used until the cap is full, because once a player is signed they become part of the calculation as to how much cap room remains for the next guy.

They could have chosen to do the cap room process any number of ways, and "why" they chose that particular one isn't explained or really important.

[answerthink]

The rationale I provided for the roster charge concept was based on a direct conversation I had with a lawyer in the league office several years ago (I try not to provide my own opinions in these forums). You can certainly disagree with it if you so choose. I would imagine that for many of the rules in the document, if you ask any of the people who were involved in their negotiation and drafting, you will get slightly different answers as to why they work as they do. I therefore tend to agree with Dunkenstein and DBoys that the whys aren’t really as important as the mechanics.

There are several ways in which roster charges could ultimately reduce cap space as opposed to simply change the allocation of it, potentially including by utilization of the MLE for Room Teams or Min Salary exception as you suggest.

[nodeal]

Why is the "Why" not important? Im sure most here already have the CBA memorized. The whys interest me, or maybe I should say the minds of the CBA interest me. Why do they do what they do?

Most rules I can look at and find a very good reason for it, this one I cant.

I can think of many not great but possible reasons. Which do you think it is?

I think its to close a loop hole. To prevent teams from signing 3-5 players then filling out the rest of their roster with exceptions. It doesnt agree with the quote below though.

The roster charge concept exists to ensure that teams with cap space are thinking about their entire rosters when making player personnel decisions. It ensures that teams below the cap can complete their required 13 player minimum regular season rosters without exceeding the cap. Math dictates the way to do that is to stop the charges at 12.

This quote would suggest they want to make sure a team is always capable of signing the 13th player. Almost as if room/min exceptions dont exist.

Another possibility, but I couldnt find old CBAs to confirm. Is that the roster charge dates back before exceptions, and they never bothered to take out the roster charge.

[DBoys]

In general, we can observe that the reason to have a roster charge is a practical one. The cap, or limit, on salaries is in theory the most money a team can spend on salaries. But alongside that framework, they have created both exceptions (which allow teams to exceed that limit) and rules that limit how those exceptions are used (which help force the teams closer back to the limit). This would be one of those limiting mechanisms which dampens some abilities to exceed the cap.

But why did they decide they wanted incomplete roster charges at all? Why make this specific way to limit spending to some degree? Who knows. Answering "why" requires access to the thoughts of the one who created the CBA. But there is no such singular person to ask.

Instead, we have to remember that the CBA is a negotiated set of rules. As such, it is a practical compromise between multiple parties, each of whom had their own "why" to push for this or that. Some are in the league office, others represented the union. This particular calculating mechanism may have started with the mental whims of one side, the other or both, and then was altered by the effects of compromise. And underlying that, the current CBA's negotiators may have had no thoughts of their own, and merely adopted some or all of the results of prior negotiations to try to create a desired effect, without even caring why that methodology came to be.

So the reason that the 2011 CBA has opted for one methodology or another, absent reasoning included in the document, is unanswerable. And as a practical matter, whether we do or don't know "why" doesn't really change anything anyhow.