What are the rules with the MLE and Golden State?

[panthermark]

I'm trying to figure out what GS can and can't do regarding all of their FA's.

For instance, can Morrow be S&T'd at all?

If a team offers Morrow $4M a year, and GS matches (Gilbert rule), do they still have the rest of the MLE to use?

Which of their players are early bird vs non-birds?

I'm really curious about the S&T part for Morrow...I'm not sure if GS can trade him to any team if they have to match his salary because I don't think they can offer him more than what the early bird allows prior to him signing an offer sheet from another team.

Thanks

[Three34]

1) Yes

2) If they match him, it won't come out of their MLE. It'll be done with an Early Bird exception.

3) Morrow and Hunter: Early Bird. George and Watson: full Bird. Tolliver: non-Bird.

4) He can be signed and traded in lieu of signing an offer sheet, but not after he's done so. Once he's signed an offer sheet, that's it; he's signed under the terms of that contract to either the team who signed him, or Golden State.

[panthermark]

1) Yes

2) If they match him, it won't come out of their MLE. It'll be done with an Early Bird exception.

3) Morrow and Hunter: Early Bird. George and Watson: full Bird. Tolliver: non-Bird.

4) He can be signed and traded in lieu of signing an offer sheet, but not after he's done so. Once he's signed an offer sheet, that's it; he's signed under the terms of that contract to either the team who signed him, or Golden State.

Thanks for responding Sham...but I'm lost in the details.

I thought Morrow would fall under the Gilbert rule if another team offered him more than 175% of his current salary (which is what GS can match as an Early Bird).....and being is current salary is only $736,420, he he will most likey be offered much more that that....but the Gilbert rule caps the offer at the MLE limit...and GS can use their MLE to match.
http://members.cox.net/lmcoon/salarycap.htm#Q37
And that is where things get hairy. Under Q19, it stated the greater of 175% of salary or the average salary. Does it have to be one or the other? Can the amount be somewhere in between? Does the Gilbert rule only apply to secound round picks? Does GS have to offer either the QO (for restriced FAs), the 175%, OR the full MLE?

Too many details....

[Three34]

The Early Bird exception starts at the value of the mid level exception, so the Warriors can use that exception to match. If he was a non-Bird free agent, it would factor, because the non-Bird exception only allows you to sign dudes for a maximum of 120% of their previous salary, but Morrow has spent two years with the Warriors and is thus an Early Bird free agent.

[Three34]

You're confusing yourself by interceding irrelevant bits, so let's start from the beginning.

Morrow's a free agent this summer. He has played only two years in the league. You can make players with three years or less experience into restricted free agents, whether they like it or not, by extending a qualifying offer. Because Morrow's previous (i.e. current) salary is only for the minimum salary, the QO Golden State must offer to make him restricted will be for $1,029,389, which is the value of next year's third year player minimum ($884,293) plus $175,000. If they offer it to him, he becomes a restricted free agent. If they don't, he can walk free to pastures anew. Since letting him walk free is not a good idea, they will offer it to him.

Once restricted, Morrow now has six options. He can either:

a) re-sign with Golden State for the value of that qualifying offer,

b) re-sign with Golden State for between 1 to 5 years, and to an amount that begins at somewhere between the minimum salary and the value of the Mid-Level Exception,

c) sign an offer sheet with another team within the same parameters (let's forget the Arenas rule for a minute, because he's not good enough for it to matter)

d) get his arse signed and traded somewhere,

e) sign a contract with a non-NBA team, or

f) retire from the game and run a country pub.


Because Morrow has spent two years with the same team without changing teams as a free agent, he is an Early Bird free agent. This means that Golden State can give him a contract of up to five years in length that can start as high at up to the value of the first year of the mid-level exception (see point b), and they don't have to use the MLE to do it. The Early Bird exception IS a salary cap exception in itself; they don't need to use another one.

Points (A), (E) and (F) are not going to happen, so let's ignore them for now. Once he is made restricted, Morrow can do one of two things;

1) sign an offer sheet with another team and see if Golden State matches it,
2) work out a sign and trade with another team and take out the risk factor of restricted free agency, or
3) re-sign with Golden State for however much he can squeeze out of their fluctuating ownership.

Whichever of the three he does, he cannot sign for a contract that starts at higher than the value of the MLE. If he signs a deal with another team, that team must use their MLE to do it. But if he signs a deal with Golden State, then they don't need to use theirs to do it. They can use the Early Bird Exception, which, as noted above, can go up to the value of the MLE.

The bits of the FAQ that point this out are:

EARLY BIRD EXCEPTION -- A player qualifies for this exception essentially after playing two seasons without being waived or changing teams as a free agent (see question number 25 for details). Using this exception, a team may re-sign its own free agent for 175% of his salary the previous season or the average player salary, whichever is greater

MID-LEVEL SALARY EXCEPTION -- This exception allows a team to sign any free agent to a contract equal to the average salary

In order to make their free agent a restricted free agent, a team must submit a qualifying offer to the player by June 30. The qualifying offer [.....] must be for 125% of the player's previous salary, or the player's minimum salary (see question number 11) plus $175,000, whichever is greater.

[Three34]

As for your questions:

I thought Morrow would fall under the Gilbert rule if another team offered him more than 175% of his current salary (which is what GS can match as an Early Bird)

He falls under the Gilbert rule because he has only two years of experience. But the Gilbert rule only applies if a team wants to sign him for a contract that pays more than the full value of the mid level exception. And any team that wants to do this to Anthony freaking Morrow would be bloody insane.

.....and being is current salary is only $736,420, he he will most likey be offered much more that that....but the Gilbert rule caps the offer at the MLE limit...and GS can use their MLE to match.

They could, but they don't need to, because they can use the Early Bird Exceptipn to match. This is the most important point of our whole tete-a-tete.

And that is where things get hairy. Under Q19, it stated the greater of 175% of salary or the average salary. Does it have to be one or the other?

No

Can the amount be somewhere in between?

Yes

Does the Gilbert rule only apply to secound round picks?

It applies to any non-first rounders, and for the record, Morrow was undrafted.

Does GS have to offer either the QO (for restriced FAs), the 175%, OR the full MLE?

To make him restricted, they have to offer the QO. If they do, the QO will be for the minimum salary plus $175,000. If they want to re-sign him for anywhere between the minimum and the MLE, they can do so at their leisure, and don't need to crack off the MLE to do so.

[Three34]

And finally, to clarify; I don't think you understand what the Arenas rule is.

The Arenas rule is so named because of the case of Gilbert Arenas. (Carlos Boozer's departure from Cleveland was an identical case, but no one has any sympathy for them because they were trying to diddle the system and got caught out. So the Arenas rule it is.) Arenas was in the same situation as Morrow; his first contract was a two year minimum, and when it ended, he became a restricted free agent. However, Arenas was about 47 times better than Morrow at this time, so when Washington signed him, they signed him to a contract much bigger than the MLE.

From what we learnt above, with the Morrow case, we learnt that played with only two years experience are only Early Bird free agents. We also learned that the Early Bird exception allows you to re-sign players for up to the value of the full MLE in the first year, but not for more than that. Furthermore, it is of course self-evident that the MLE is equal to the value of the MLE; therefore, when Washington signed Arenas to an offer sheet for $19 billion in the first year or whatever it was, Golden State had no means with which to match it. The Early Bird exception wasn't big enough, the MLE wasn't big enough, and they didn't have any cap room......so they lost out.

This was a trifle harsh, so in came the Arenas rule. It means that players with only one or two years experience cannot be signed for contracts starting at more than the value of the MLE; the reason for that is that the player's current team will then always have a mechanism with which to match it.

The rule has not been used since it came in. No one has been good enough to be in a situation that applied. And Anthony Morrow won't be either, unless some GM out there goes batsheet crazy.

[Dunkenstein]

What I don't understand is while Arenas was suspended, was the Arenas rule suspended? I can't find that anywhere in Mr. Coon's FAX. Would it help if I had a Fax machine?

How about when he was in the halfway house. What was that halfway between? The maximum and the minimum? The midlevel and the lowlevel exertion?

And they said in the papers that he's now on probation for two years. But the CBA runs out the July after next July. Does that mean that he'll have to negotiate a new probation? And if there had been a lockout while he was in the halfway house, would he have been lockedout of the halfway house? It's all so confusing.

And how come Mr. Sham you use foreign sounding words like arse and batsheet? Are you from another country and if you are how can we trust that you know about American basketball? Does that have anything with why you edited your perversious posts so many times? Were you embarrassed by that which you wrote or did you just change your mind?

[Dunkenstein]

And where is Golden State anyway? I can't find it anywhere and I have the latest Rand McNally. I know this isn't your area of expertness Mr. Sham being as you are a foreigner, but do you think Rand McNally is one person or two? By that I mean is it a name for a person whose first name is Rand and his last name is McNally or is it a Mr. Rand and a Mr. McNally who got together to figure out every road in America and I guess Canada and Mexico too?

And have you noticed that so many big cities have a Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard. I wonder if you took all the Martin Luther King Jr Boulevards and tied them together in one long street whether they would stretch from one end of Utah to the other which by the way doesn't seem to have a Martin Luther King Jr boulevard. I wonder why?

[panthermark]

Thanks Sham...

So basically, the Gilbert rule only kicks in if the "total" offer is above the MLE (which is when you get into all the funny math on the back-end of the contract).

Early Birds can be resigned even if the team is above the cap...but only up to basically MLE money.

And of course Full-Birds can be re-signed for any amount.....

Gothca...