RealGM

So, here is a (maybe?) gray area interpretation question.

-- We have seen that players can modify the guaranteed money in their deals -- see Lawson moving the last year to unguaranteed prior to his Houston trade in a not so great move in hindsight.
-- When players with guaranteed money across years are bought out for less than the guaranteed money, the cap hit is spread proportionately with the remaining guaranteed money. So, a hypothetical player owed 2.4m more this year and 1.6m next year that takes 2m instead of the full 4m,would have that show up as a cap hit of 1.2m this year (plus already incurred salary) and 0.8m next year.


Given those two, could a hypothetical player -- lets call him Dunleavy -- and a team -- for simplicity lets go with the first team alphabetically and Atlanta -- agree to make the last year of a contract fully unguaranteed. And then buyout the player for the full amount of the first year. In this case a buyout of the full 2.4 remaining this year, with the effect that there is no hit on the cap next year?

I could see a situation where a player could agree to give up 1.6m to get freedom now, but a team might only accept such a buyout if it did not add inflexible dead money to the next year's cap.

So, would such a move be viewed as a transparent switching of the buyout to 100% in the current year and thus forbidden? Or a follow on transaction that is also separately legal, and might not have happened if not for the first?

Any precedents for something like this? I'm trying to think of one, but all of the Sixers buyouts with 2 years were just at their full salary amounts with no giveback by the player.

1 Dunleavy has never had any of his money in 2016-17 non-guaranteed, so there's that.
2 As we speak, no NBA player has a partial guarantee in this season, plus in a future season.
3 Buyout rules are changing in the new CBA, so trying to figure buyout hypotheticals regarding what might be allowed in future years is meaningless.

DBoys wrote:1 Dunleavy has never had any of his money in 2016-17 non-guaranteed, so there's that.
2 As we speak, no NBA player has a partial guarantee in this season, plus in a future season.
3 Buyout rules are changing in the new CBA, so trying to figure buyout hypotheticals regarding what might be allowed in future years is meaningless.

Topic pretty prominently says '18 in the title even. Topic text references the last year of his deal, and notes he has a year after this year that is partially guaranteed.

Question was about a buyout happening now, so it would obviously be under the current CBA.

I'm confused as to how you got confused about the fundamentals of the question this far off, it is pretty wild.

Sorry, guess I misread the question. I understood it to be asking about shifting guaranteed money from one year to the next, where you are lowering the guarantee amount in one year while adding to it in another.

As for whether one possibility in a buyout is to simply lop off the guarantee of a specific future year, the answer is yes, absolutely, no problem whatsoever. Not uncommon, even. A "buyout" is the financial result of an agreed-upon removal of some of the guarantee in a contract, on a conditional basis (conditioned upon the player clearing waivers), and they have to specify what is being made non-guaranteed.

So to create the result you envision, they would simply agree to remove the guarantee from the 2018 year, conditioned on a waiver. Then waive the player, and the contract operates as it says. Easy peazy, done and done.

HartfordWhalers wrote:all of the Sixers buyouts with 2 years were just at their full salary amounts with no giveback by the player.

To be clear, such wouldn't actually be described as "buyouts" at all. They are just players getting waived or cut or released, or similar terminology. We use "buyout" as a specific subset in which the money obligation does get reduced.

DBoys wrote:

HartfordWhalers wrote:all of the Sixers buyouts with 2 years were just at their full salary amounts with no giveback by the player.

To be clear, such wouldn't actually be described as "buyouts" at all. They are just players getting waived or cut or released, or similar terminology. We use "buyout" as a specific subset in which the money obligation does get reduced.

This is a really important point, and came dangerously close to being glossed over.