How a Shrinking Salary Cap Helps MIN

[shrink]

I found the Hollinger article at the end of this link to be exceptionally interesting, but Abbott and Adande's articles reinforce the fact. Economic issues are going to make things very tough on several NBA franchises, and I believe its something that will strongly benefit the wolves.

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/stor ... ions09/nba

To summarize, the current economy makes it unlikely the salary cap will rise much in 2009 and may even decrease to around $50 mil by 2010. This is extremely painful to owners that are adamant about staying under the lux (which rises or falls with the cap), and puts a big dent into the plans of teams that want max money under the salary cap to get a key free agent in 2010. They projected a rising cap, and with contracts with 10% raises, they will now find themselves in tight financial situations.

This helps the Wolves a great deal, because McHale cleared most of his longterm salary at better prices before other teams realized a potentially lowered cap. This means that owners will spend even less in 2009 on Free Agents, and our expirings and cap space will be in even higher demand than perhaps any year in NBA history.

If you're interested in the economics, I recommend reading through the predictions article.