john2jer wrote:younggunsmn wrote:Incorrect. It's his option to excercise, not ours to buy out, it doesn't work like baseball. Buyouts are prorated to any guaranteed money in each year of the deal. Hassell has 4.35 million guaranteed him in 2008-09 and 2009-2010. Any buyout would be spread equally. There's really no way taking his salary on would save us any money on next year's cap. McCants has more value as an expiring contract than any of the new jersey players you threw in there.
So his contract is ETO. That means he has the option of getting out of it? OK, I looked it up on the NBPA website and it's basically he'd get the full value of the contract, with the option to shorten the years. It is a player's option. But couldn't we possibly offer him a buy out to shorten the years in order for him to sign a new contract with a contender who could use him or go back to New Jersey?
Unless we find a place to trade McCants's expiring deal, he has very little value to us because we wouldn't have enough cap room to make a big signing without some kind of trade of Miller and/or Cardinal/Madsen.
Thanks for the clarification younggunsmn. Seems I was off a little bit on that, but even still my thinking would be plausible.
No prob, the CBA gets pretty convoluted sometimes.
No, unfortunately any buyout we agreed to would be spread equally over the 2 years no matter how they tried to get around it.
Hudson's contract was different because the last year of the deal was based on a "games played" "trigger" which he hadn't yet met. Since that year was technically not guaranteed we didn't absorb any salary cap hit and the buyout amount was prorated to only the first 2 years. These types of "incentives" aren't allowed any more in the current CBA.
Antoine Walker's buyout is another interesting case. He had 1 million guaranteed to him next year of his 10 million salary. Since he took 85% of his remaining guaranteed money, that prorated to Memphis absorbing 850k onto next year's cap. Greg Buckner is in the same situation.
The key when figuring out the cap hit of a buyout is finding the amount of guaranteed money on each year of the deal.
Players typically rarely take less than 80% of their guaranteed money in a buyout. Hassell doesn't have much value around the league right now, it would be foolish for him to walk away from much guaranteed money. McCants only has more value than the other players because he is an expiring and they are not.
Mike Miller still has alot of credibility in the league because of what he's done the past few years. Other teams will cut him some slack now for his low scoring numbers because of the injury and the adjustment period to a new and young team. If, however, he continues to struggle with his shot and lose minutes to other players his trade value will start to go down. This is the quandry we are at with him, he needs to get healthy and play starter minutes.