The Guilty Party wrote:Take a look at Stefanski's quote for a second....
“We’ll see July 1 who has opted out, who is unrestricted and restricted,” he said. “Ourselves and Memphis are the only two teams that really have substantial money to deal with. So I think we can just go down our list and don’t forget, we have the (mid-level exception) too.”
The thing that jumps out to me is that the term "mid-level exception" was never actually said by Ed and apparently placed in the quote by author. Perhaps the author of this is wrong and believed Ed was referring to the MLE when he was talking about something else.
Perhaps he actually said/meant MSE or minimum salary exception. Teams always can use as many MSEs as they need. It is basically an unlimited exception that doesn't get granted on a limited basis and likewise isn't something that carries a cap hold that you need to renounce. I'd be somewhat surprised if Stefanski actually was mistaken about a basic CBA principle. Likely it is the quote that is incorrect. As was pointed out, they put that part in parentheses so he didn't actually say those exact words.
It seems that it has already been pretty well established that you will not have the MLE in addition to cap space, but I will my voice to the chorus of voices confirming that you will not.
I was one of a small handful of people who helped Larry Coon create the 2005 CBA FAQ, so perhaps that will help settle it for the few remaining holdouts
Also, I saw that killbuckner chimed in on this. He is very knowledgeable on these matters as well. If you have future questions that he happens to chime in on, the safe default assumption would be that what he says is accurate.
