VicVinegar wrote:Can someone knowledgeable please give me the spark notes version of the Pistons cap situation? Rumor is they were in on Naz Reid and considering he signed at $25M a year, idk how they would've fit that in (minus a trade or the fact that they low balled him). Sport trac says they have about $19M in cap space if they let go of all of their cap holds (THJ, Reed, Schroeder, Beasley, Waters, Jenkins). That wouldn't be enough to fit Naz, nor would the $14M MLE.
Two possibilities:
1) TL underestimated the price for Naz and thought our cap would be enough
Or far more likely:
2) We had a deal in place to clear cap space to get to that 25 mill level- most likely via dealing Fontecchio’s expiring deal, which likely would have been cheap.
It’s important to note, thanks to my evolving understanding of the situation, that this would almost certainly mean losing Beasley- as we’d have only the 8.5 mill room exception to offer at that point.
We do not have Bird rights (the thing that allows you to resign guys regardless of cap space) on Beasley due to his being a one year deal. As such the only way to offer him more than the 8.5 mill room exception is to either a) maintain our cap holds and act as a salary capped team- giving us the larger MLE or b) Renounce everyone and resign Beasley with cap space.
Also important to note that given the dearth of cap space in the league it is extremely unlikely that Beasley gets an offer above the non taxpayer MLE, so giving Beasley, say, 17 million per year, is likely a waste of resources.
If we take Schroder’s comments about us “not waiting for him” at face value then the only logical conclusion to make is that the plan is to renounce players and operate with cap space. That could change- the situation with free agents is highly fluid.
It’s a dilemma brought about by the fact that we signed Beasley as a one year rental and he played like more than that.
Anyone in the know, please correct me if I’m wrong on any of this.
