RealGM

I have two questions that I just sort of thought about and I'm hoping someone can answer them for me.
First, if a player that has a player option in his contract. How is it treated if he were to be waived before he was able to elect said option? For example, if the Cavs waived Ryan Hollins today before he put his option in, would still be able to choose that option in some way or does he lose it. Or is that something that would need to negotiated on a case-by-case basis?

My other question deals with trade exceptions. I don't know how to put it in a question so I will just give an example. Lets say the Cavs absorb Rip Hamilton with their trade exception. In return they want to give a member of their team, say Ramon Sessions. Now, Detroit doesn't have the cap space to absorb his contract. And of course you can't combine players with TE's. However, could the Pistons acquire the TE for Rip and then in turn flip it right back to the Cavs for one of their players and therefore become Rip for Ramon Sessions or whomever?

1) If waived Hollins would be entitled to all the guaranteed money left on his contract, including player options. As an example, Eddy Curry had a player option for this year. If the Knicks could have made that go away by waiving him before last summer they would have.

2) From Cleveland's perspective, they'd use some of their TPE on Hamilton, then create a new, smaller TPE for Sessions. From Detroit's perspective, they'd trade Hamilton for Sessions (simple as Sessions makes less than Hamilton). Detroit would also gain a TPE for the difference in salaries between the two.

giberish wrote: 1) If waived Hollins would be entitled to all the guaranteed money left on his contract, including player options. As an example, Eddy Curry had a player option for this year. If the Knicks could have made that go away by waiving him before last summer they would have.

I don't think this is accurate. From prior discussions here I believe that it's a simple issue and that contracts are universally designed to specify what happens to options for future years, if there's a waiver prior to that point.

So the answer to the original question would be: the player gets paid, or doesn't get paid, according to the terms of the contract.

Since it's a PLAYER option we're talking about, you'd think that any such contract would always specify a waiver clause that pays the player that extra year, but nevertheless it's still up to whatever is negotiated in the contract itself.

giberish wrote: 2) From Cleveland's perspective, they'd use some of their TPE on Hamilton, then create a new, smaller TPE for Sessions. From Detroit's perspective, they'd trade Hamilton for Sessions (simple as Sessions makes less than Hamilton). Detroit would also gain a TPE for the difference in salaries between the two.

It's simpler than that. There would simply be a Hamilton-for-Sessions deal submitted.

For DET, they can do the deal because Sessions' contract is less than Hamilton's. They'd get a newly created TPE for the difference in salary.

For CLE, the same deal would work, but they'd be using their TPE to take Hamilton and getting a newly created TPE for Sessions.