Do bonuses count against the Salary Cap?

[DaddyCool19]

Especially if a player can't achieve the goals that he has to to get it. Gary Harris just signed a 84M contract and 10M of it is incentive based. Can someone explain it to me? If it doesn't count against the cap, can't superstars exploit it with smaller guaranteed contract where the bonus is easily doable (like playing 30 games, making the all star team, making a certain amount of threes like in Harkless case)?

[Smitty731]

Especially if a player can't achieve the goals that he has to to get it. Gary Harris just signed a 84M contract and 10M of it is incentive based. Can someone explain it to me? If it doesn't count against the cap, can't superstars exploit it with smaller guaranteed contract where the bonus is easily doable (like playing 30 games, making the all star team, making a certain amount of threes like in Harkless case)?

"Likely" bonuses count against the cap. "Unlikely" bonuses do not. All that makes a bonus "likely" or "unlikely" is whether or not it happened the previous season. Using Maurice Harkless as an example, he had an "unlikely" bonus for shooting over 35% from three last year. He did and he got the bonus. For this current year and moving forward, that bonus now converts to "likely" and his cap number is bumped up.

In the case of the luxury tax apron or hard cap, "unlikely" bonuses are included in the calculation. This closes the loophole of being able to exceed the hard cap at the end of the season by having bonuses kick in. This came up this summer with the Pelicans and Jrue Holiday. He has significant money in his deal in "unlikely" bonuses, which kick in for the tax apron calculation. Since the Pels are hard capped, they had to make some moves (salary dumping Pondexter for example) to have room to maneuver under the hard cap.

[DaddyCool19]

Especially if a player can't achieve the goals that he has to to get it. Gary Harris just signed a 84M contract and 10M of it is incentive based. Can someone explain it to me? If it doesn't count against the cap, can't superstars exploit it with smaller guaranteed contract where the bonus is easily doable (like playing 30 games, making the all star team, making a certain amount of threes like in Harkless case)?

"Likely" bonuses count against the cap. "Unlikely" bonuses do not. All that makes a bonus "likely" or "unlikely" is whether or not it happened the previous season. Using Maurice Harkless as an example, he had an "unlikely" bonus for shooting over 35% from three last year. He did and he got the bonus. For this current year and moving forward, that bonus now converts to "likely" and his cap number is bumped up.

In the case of the luxury tax apron or hard cap, "unlikely" bonuses are included in the calculation. This closes the loophole of being able to exceed the hard cap at the end of the season by having bonuses kick in. This came up this summer with the Pelicans and Jrue Holiday. He has significant money in his deal in "unlikely" bonuses, which kick in for the tax apron calculation. Since the Pels are hard capped, they had to make some moves (salary dumping Pondexter for example) to have room to maneuver under the hard cap.

Who decides whats likely and whats not? What happens if a player who is about to enter free agency is normally a 40% 3P shooter but has a bad seasons where he only makes 33% of his attempts and gets a bonus if he hits 40% again. Would that be a likely bonus or unlikely?

[DBoys]

Note -
1 Ultimately, a team's cap will be charged for ALL bonuses that are earned, and not charged for those that aren't.
2 As for how they account for possible bonuses before anyone knows if they will actually be earned or not, as Smitty says, they make some distinctions between LTBE and NLTBE. But not always. In some calculations, such as determining whether there is still cap room to sign another player, ALL bonuses are counted.
3 Most of these issues are easy to ascertain. On the trickier ones, they have a set of people who decide, and they do so, and that's that. See Coon FAQ 74.
4 What is normal? They define "normal" as results from most recent season, and usually that's the best indicator anyhow. It's a "what have you done lately" league. In the example you offer, it would be NLTBE and a routine one to categorize.

[Smitty731]

Especially if a player can't achieve the goals that he has to to get it. Gary Harris just signed a 84M contract and 10M of it is incentive based. Can someone explain it to me? If it doesn't count against the cap, can't superstars exploit it with smaller guaranteed contract where the bonus is easily doable (like playing 30 games, making the all star team, making a certain amount of threes like in Harkless case)?

"Likely" bonuses count against the cap. "Unlikely" bonuses do not. All that makes a bonus "likely" or "unlikely" is whether or not it happened the previous season. Using Maurice Harkless as an example, he had an "unlikely" bonus for shooting over 35% from three last year. He did and he got the bonus. For this current year and moving forward, that bonus now converts to "likely" and his cap number is bumped up.

In the case of the luxury tax apron or hard cap, "unlikely" bonuses are included in the calculation. This closes the loophole of being able to exceed the hard cap at the end of the season by having bonuses kick in. This came up this summer with the Pelicans and Jrue Holiday. He has significant money in his deal in "unlikely" bonuses, which kick in for the tax apron calculation. Since the Pels are hard capped, they had to make some moves (salary dumping Pondexter for example) to have room to maneuver under the hard cap.

Who decides whats likely and whats not? What happens if a player who is about to enter free agency is normally a 40% 3P shooter but has a bad seasons where he only makes 33% of his attempts and gets a bonus if he hits 40% again. Would that be a likely bonus or unlikely?

I explained how it is determined if a bonus is "likely" or "unlikely". If it happened the year prior, it is "likely". If it didn't, it is "unlikely". As DBoys said, it is a "what have you done lately" league. They keep it simple as to deciding "likely" vs "unlikely" too.