RealGM

Okay cap experts. What are the rules on contract buyouts. It looks like we're buying out the Jet in the offseason, but can we buyout JT? What effect would that have on the cap.

This question is just in case Isaih Thomas doesn't get a job as GM somewhere we can trade JT to.

Sent from my GT-N5110 using RealGM Forums mobile app

scotch_and_dice wrote:Okay cap experts. What are the rules on contract buyouts. It looks like we're buying out the Jet in the offseason, but can we buyout JT? What effect would that have on the cap.

This question is just in case Isaih Thomas doesn't get a job as GM somewhere we can trade JT to.

Sent from my GT-N5110 using RealGM Forums mobile app

Buying out a player has no effect on the cap. All it potentially does, is save the team a little money.

For instance, let's suppose Terry's contract next season is $5 million dollars. If the FO an Terry both agree to a $3 million buyout, than the King's pay Terry $3 million, Terry sacrifices $2 million, and is now able to sign with any team he wants for a new contract.

However the King's still have a $5 million cap hit. (So next season if we do buy out Terry, we're essentially going to have a $5.5 million dollar cap hit and no player. You can basically think of it as us lowering the salary cap or the luxury tax level by $5.5 million. So instead of a $71 million luxury tax threshold, it'll now be $65.5 million as we still need to field 13 players and still have that $5.5 million cap hold)



Buying out players does nothing to your cap.

And before anyone brings up amnesties, we don't have anyone that is eligible for the amnesty provision. Players would have to had their contract on July 1st 2011. Therefore, Thompson and Landry do not qualify (actually no one qualifies)

There is a clause that lets you break up contracts into smaller and longer pieces.

What happens is you add two years to the contracts length, and divide it up.

Let's say you had Thornton signed for 9 million for 1 year (using 9 for easier math than what he has).

You would take his remaining 1 year, and two more years to it for cap hit, so you would be looking at a 3 million cap hit for 3 seasons instead of 9 million for 1.

I don't think any team has used this clause before.

But let's say you wanted to sign a guy, but you lacked the room for next season, you could break up a contract this way to buy him out.

It would take quite a situation to do this, so if you wanted to buy out Carl or JT you could in theory make their contract length in the off season as 5 years, and shave a portion off the amount you would have paid for the next 3 seasons.

Most of the time this would be a poor choice.