It really doesn't make any difference, TPE's would let a team go over the cap, but there are more restrictions on how it can be used. Cap would only let you go up to the cap before being limited to minimum contracts, but there aren't the restrictions in terms of who you can combine it with. Being under the cap also means that Koufos can be combined with another player in trade without restriction now as opposed to only by himself if we had been over the cap.
Exceptions had to be renounced in order to give up cap for Beasley, once that happened, Wolves can't go back over this season. All the TPE stuff is really mostly semantics. Bottom line is that the Wolves got about $12M to play with in the Jefferson deal (they've now used some on Ridnour).
Larry Coon wrote:20. How do exceptions count against the cap? Does being under the cap always mean that a team has room to sign free agents? Do teams ever lose their exceptions?
If a team is below the cap, then their Disabled Player, Bi-Annual, Mid-Level and/or Traded Player exceptions are added to their team salary, and the league treats the team as though they are over the cap. This is to prevent a loophole, in a manner similar to free agent amounts (see question numbers 30, 31, 32, 33). A team can't act like they're under the cap and sign free agents using cap room, and then use their Disabled Player, Bi-Annual, Mid-Level and/or Traded Player exceptions. Consequently, the exceptions are added to their team salary (putting the team over the cap) if the team is under the cap and adding the exceptions puts them over the cap. If a team is already over the cap, then the exceptions are not added to their team salary. There would be no point in doing so, since there is no cap room for signing free agents.
So being under the cap does not necessarily mean a team has room to sign free agents. For example, assume the cap is $49.5 million, and a team has $43 million committed to salaries. They also have a Mid-Level exception for $5 million and a Traded Player exception for $5.5 million. Even though their salaries put them $6.5 million under the cap, their exceptions are added to their salaries, putting them at $53.5 million, or $4 million over the cap. So they actually have no cap room to sign free agents, and instead must use their exceptions.
Teams have the option of renouncing their exceptions in order to claim the cap room. So in the example above, if the team renounced their Traded Player and Mid-Level exceptions, then the $10.5 million is taken off their team salary, which then totals $43 million, leaving them with $6.5 million of cap room which can then be used to sign free agent(s).
Larry Coon wrote:There is logic behind this. The whole idea behind an "exception" is that it is an exception to the rule which says a team has to be below the salary cap. In other words, an exception is a mechanism which allows a team to function above the cap. If a team isn't over the cap, then the concept of an exception is moot. Therefore, if a team's team salary ever drops this far, its exceptions go away. The effect is that a team may have either exceptions or cap room, but they can't have both.
