RealGM

in the 2014/2015 season, Miami has the following contracts which are all player options:

Lebron James
Dwyane Wade
Chris Bosh
Udonis Haslem
Mike Miller
Joel Anthony

That is basically Miami's entire payroll except for Norris Cole at $2M and Ray Allen at $3M.

They will all have bird rights as they would have all played 4 or so straight seasons in Miami.

Can Pat Riley not have them decline their player options, use the extra cap space to go and sign free-agents whilst having like $45M of cap space available, and then re-signing the Big 3 and others using their Bird rule once they have signed whomever else they want with their cap space?

I understand that luxury taxes may mean they won't use all $45M of the cap space, but theoretically is this possible??

Riley tried something like this with Juwan Howard in the 90s. The NBA punished us and voided the contract.

A more likely (I dont even know if thats the right word) scenario is one, two, or all of the big 3 opting out and re-sign taking small pay cuts again to free up some room

You can't do that, but what you can do (and i believe we will) is restructure the contracts that have a player option on them, spread them out and play with numbers to our advantage. it will help us avoid a high luxury tax and possibly allow us to get some cap room that can be used to get a FA or 2.

We should just forget about the idea of capspace for the foreseeable future. Exceptions FTW.

Cap holds prevent that sort of maneuvering. Basically until we sign them they count against our cap as if we had signed them to the max we could. If we want to get rid of the cap hold, we can renounce the olayer's rights, but then you lose the Bird Rights

I've just reviewed the CBA and it seems that yes, there's restrictions in place to prevent this. This is a way around it though.

The only way around it is to have the Big 3 decline their player option and then give them each say 1 year $10M contracts and use the saving to acquire one or two talented free-agents. After the 1-year, the Big 3 will still keep their bird rights because they've been with the same team and you'll be able to go over the cap and offer them the max after their 1-year contract expires.

You have to be careful about how you do this, but there's nothing in the CBA that says you specifically can't do this. You probably just need to make it look "reasonable."

If there were not changes to the way in which luxury taxes were accounted for now, I'm pretty confident Riley would have been thinking along these lines all along. The new changes though mean that going over the luxury tax threshold is very onerous.

Beasley wrote:in the 2014/2015 season, Miami has the following contracts which are all player options:

Lebron James
Dwyane Wade
Chris Bosh
Udonis Haslem
Mike Miller
Joel Anthony

That is basically Miami's entire payroll except for Norris Cole at $2M and Ray Allen at $3M.

They will all have bird rights as they would have all played 4 or so straight seasons in Miami.

Can Pat Riley not have them decline their player options, use the extra cap space to go and sign free-agents whilst having like $45M of cap space available, and then re-signing the Big 3 and others using their Bird rule once they have signed whomever else they want with their cap space?

I understand that luxury taxes may mean they won't use all $45M of the cap space, but theoretically is this possible??

No, if they decline their player options Miami still has cap holds associated with them which will gobble up all of Miami's cap space. Miami would have to renounce them to remove the cap holds and if you renounce them then they lose their Bird rights.

Long story short, the only way this happens is if the big 3 all take significantly less than they could get. Like 10 mil a year to start. It's so unlikely it's not even worth talking about.

BTW the big 3 will all be eligible for no-trade clauses in 2014, I wonder if any of them will get one.

The max salary now for a team (without bird rights) is near $15 million right? Is it feasible that they could take a price reduction to that level rather than take the max we could give because of our bird rights?

2014...wow that's two more NBA championships away. We could have three-peated by that time...I'm starting to appreciate how hard it is to threepeat now, especially with guys getting older and cap limits and all that stuff. I feel like it was easier before because a team could really just outspend their opponents (a la the Lakers) and always field a contender.

narmerguy wrote:The max salary now for a team (without bird rights) is near $15 million right? Is it feasible that they could take a price reduction to that level rather than take the max we could give because of our bird rights?

2014...wow that's two more NBA championships away. We could have three-peated by that time...I'm starting to appreciate how hard it is to threepeat now, especially with guys getting older and cap limits and all that stuff. I feel like it was easier before because a team could really just outspend their opponents (a la the Lakers) and always field a contender.

New CBA was made to counter teams like ours and the Lakers.

Old CBA, you got a 6 mil MLE every off-season. With 6 mil, you can sign almost any role player you want......

much harder with current 3 mil

StrengthNHonor wrote:

narmerguy wrote:The max salary now for a team (without bird rights) is near $15 million right? Is it feasible that they could take a price reduction to that level rather than take the max we could give because of our bird rights?

2014...wow that's two more NBA championships away. We could have three-peated by that time...I'm starting to appreciate how hard it is to threepeat now, especially with guys getting older and cap limits and all that stuff. I feel like it was easier before because a team could really just outspend their opponents (a la the Lakers) and always field a contender.

New CBA was made to counter teams like ours and the Lakers.

Old CBA, you got a 6 mil MLE every off-season. With 6 mil, you can sign almost any role player you want......

much harder with current 3 mil

Yeah it definitely blows. Riley's been digging up gold, working hard despite that. If only Miller was playing up to the massive contract we gave him, this team would be ungodly. I think next year might be a prime year for this team since everyone will seriously just focus on getting healthy. We'll have a less condensed season, a proper training camp, lots of stuff that will go our way.

no, if you want to retain someones bird rights they have a cap hold on your team