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New way to manipulate the salary cap

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 11:28 am
by Narf
1) Use raw cap space to sign all the players you want
2) Trade for big money players, taking back 150% of what you send out for them, going up to $6 million over the cap
3) Use the new mini-MLE ($2.5 mil this year) which teams under the cap can use after they hit the cap to go to further over the cap.

Basically, we can sign the players we want and then trade $12 mil in salary for $18 mil in return (ala Iggy, Gay, etc) and pay someone the mini-MLE after that.

In my opinion, this will become the new norm. Not only is it a better way to spend your limited resources, the team that trades their big money player (Memphis trading Gay, for instance) also gets a very valuable TPE that allows them to make a mid-season trade while only paying half of that players salary (in other words, you pocket some other team's salary dump for the trade deadline when you want to make a playoff push).

Here's an example:
Wolves cut all their free agent cap holds and Amnesty Darko.
Wolves sign Andrei Kirilenko, Alexey Shved, and Nemanja Bjelica after drafting Quincy Miller and Robert Sacre in the 2nd round (OKC pick).
Wolves trade JJ Barea ($4.5 mil) and Derrick Williams ($4.9 mil) for Okafor ($13.5 mil) and the draft rights to the #4 pick Beal (not signed yet, so no salary is included in the trade).

New Orleans now has an additional $7.3 mil or so in cap space, JJ Barea and Williams for Okafor and Beal (drafted #4). That's a hell of a deal for both teams, and allows the Wolves to go way over the cap AND they still have the mini-MLE to add a Tolliver type role player for $2.5 mil. New Orleans can resign Kaman and has a much better balanced lineup with a quality veteran PG to act as mentor off the bench (assuming they sign someone like Billups or Dragic to start).

Minnesota's final lineup
Pekovic/Okafor/Sacre
Love/Bjelica/Tolliver ($2.5 mil mini-MLE)
Kirlenko/Wes Johnson/Q. Miller
Beal/Shved/M. Lee/Ellington
Rubio/Ridnour (Shved and Lee can play PG minutes as well if there's injuries)

Just thought I'd point out the new rules. You can make a better Iggy or Gay trade AFTER signing free agents and end up having plenty of salary over the cap.

Have fun making new scenarios where you sign free agents then make trades for overpaid players :)

Re: New way to manipulate the salary cap

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 12:56 pm
by psundeen
Could be wrong, but I thought it was around 125% that could be brought back. Maybe that changed with the last CBA

Re: New way to manipulate the salary cap

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 3:24 pm
by Narf
psundeen wrote:Could be wrong, but I thought it was around 125% that could be brought back. Maybe that changed with the last CBA

That changed to 150% to teams under the lux and they added the mini MLE for teams that use cap space. The NBA basically wanted to reward teams that use cap space/drop salary as much as the teams that are over the cap (before they basically punished you for using cap space).

Re: New way to manipulate the salary cap

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 4:39 pm
by moss_is_1
Isn't it 150% or a $5m difference in salaries? so you couldn't trade $12m for $18m, but only $17m.

Re: New way to manipulate the salary cap

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 5:00 pm
by Klomp
moss_is_1 wrote:Isn't it 150% or a $5m difference in salaries? so you couldn't trade $12m for $18m, but only $17m.

Someones been playing too much GM a Team...

You are correct.

Re: New way to manipulate the salary cap

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 5:14 pm
by moss_is_1
Klomp wrote:
moss_is_1 wrote:Isn't it 150% or a $5m difference in salaries? so you couldn't trade $12m for $18m, but only $17m.

Someones been playing too much GM a Team...

You are correct.

:D

Re: New way to manipulate the salary cap

Posted: Wed May 16, 2012 10:44 pm
by black bart
Darko + Derrick Williams for Okafor and Beal is a possibility. But I would rather get Ariza + Beal for Williams + 18 + Darko. Okafor plays the same position as love. Ariza is a negative asset with 2 years on and Millicic is an expiring. I think this trade is possible.

Re: New way to manipulate the salary cap

Posted: Thu May 17, 2012 3:05 pm
by Narf
moss_is_1 wrote:
Klomp wrote:
moss_is_1 wrote:Isn't it 150% or a $5m difference in salaries? so you couldn't trade $12m for $18m, but only $17m.

Someones been playing too much GM a Team...

You are correct.

:D
Good call. I totally forgot about that.