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From C-Viv over at AJC:

Hawks principle owner Tony Ressler said he expects to spend over the NBA salary cap on player salaries.

In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week, Ressler addressed a wide-ranging number of topics in discussing his commitment to the franchise and fan base.

Ressler said one way ownership will show its commitment is by “having a payroll that is between the cap and the (luxury) tax but never below the cap, having real payroll, having a commitment to keeping a quality team."

Here

Yep, we've got a true billionaire as owner.

And This pretty much cements we'll do whatever it takes to re-sign Demarre and Millsap.

The salary cap will be $67.1 million with a luxury tax line of $81.6 million next season. The cap is expected to rise dramatically the following year with the new television contract.

The Hawks have $40.5 million in committed salary to 11 players next season.

Thoughts?
Predictions?
Concerns?

I don't love the decision to bind ourselves to a couple of limited players approaching the end of their primes, but I truly appreciate an owner coming in with the full intent to win, contend, be competitive and maintain the level of success we reached last season.

But if we're gonna have $40 million+ to play around with this summer, I'd rather see us swing for the fences!

Either way, with a new owner, a top coach, and a nice post-season run....looks like things have finally turned around for the Hawks franchise.

I would hope the discussion with Sap and DMC is stay the course, get a huge raise, and allow us to add other pieces to be able to compete with CLE in the ECF.

I can't believe this is coming PRIOR to the FA period and coming from OUR ownership! That is a huge statement IMO.

Okay, so on that, where is our weakness based on who is available? Wade/Wes Matthews? Monroe/Lopez?

The one rumor over the summer I'm not happy with is Monta Ellis...our backcourt is small enough with DS and JT in the game at the same time.

The Hawks do not have 40 million in cap space.

And spending "between the cap and the lux tax" isn't exactly a revelation in the least because, well, the A$G proved that they were very much capable of doing the same themselves. Now had he said "we'll even go into the tax if need be in the future" or "we'll spend close to the tax" that would be a revelation but throw a MLE deal on last season's team and voila, you're "between the cap and lux tax".

27th in payroll last year well UNDER the cap. Going to the lux limit would've added about 12 million to our payroll last season. Would have made a big difference.

For this year the diff between the cap and tax is about 14M. That is enough to sign another starter quality player.

The Hawks were ~2 million below the cap last season, not sure how that qualifies as "well under". You cannot just spend past the cap (hint: it's called a "cap" for a reason) and straight through the luxury tax especially as there's about 40,000 posts, threads, and blog entries throughout the internet describing specifically why it's impossible in relation to the team having the ability to retain both DeMarre and Sap. This is all very well documented in the CBA http://www.cbafaq.com/salarycap.htm. Ressler made a "well, duh" statement that certain fans are trying to interpret as though he has the ability to circumvent the CBA. He doesn't.

tbhawksfan1 wrote:27th in payroll last year well UNDER the cap. Going to the lux limit would've added about 12 million to our payroll last season. Would have made a big difference.

For this year the diff between the cap and tax is about 14M. That is enough to sign another starter quality player.

From my understanding the Hawks ability to add a couple of pieces and also keep our core intact is dependent on the order in which we pursue signings. If we wait and sign Sap and Carroll based upon the parameters of the bird exceptions we will be able to pursue other free agents with our full and mini-MLE's at the beginning of free agency. If we sign our own FAs first and exceed the bird exceptions then we lose our MLE's. A starting salary of about $16m per for Paul and about $6m for DMC would still be within the bird exception parameters. Paul's signing , if it happens first, will drastically affect Carroll's as they would then be operating over the cap to sign Demarre and would lose everything but the $2.8m "room exception". We could still sign Carroll for $10m per but it would eat up all our cap space and restrict future additions.

There is a big difference between the cap and the luxury tax. $14.5 million this year. Last yeat the Hawks were 27 in salary, under the cap. That means that they left about 13 million between what they spent and the lux tax and they carried some non-nba players as useless cap space; on the cheap.

Hope they follow a different path this year. That money left in the bank last year cost the team. Resseler has said that he's willing to spend up to the lux tax. That would be another 16 million to work with as compared to last year.