RookieStar wrote:MitchellUK wrote:As Sham said in their thread, this is basically going to happen. Their ownership is notoriously responsible, financially, and given that they aren't likely to contend this year with Rose missing most of the season, they will be looking at ways to move one or more of their less desirable deals. Don't be surprised if some sort of deal goes down where we use our TPE to take Rip Hamilton and some sort of first rounder off them in exchange for some sort of uber-protected future second.
Thing is.. most of them expect to get JJ and Vucevic and expect us to absorb boozer as well ( aside from the rip tpe and etc deal )
So.. i dunno about you but me don't like
I think most of them are mistaken. This deal would be 100% financial for the Bulls - they're over the lux-tax threshold as it is ($72.5m for 12 players. You can add $800k or so for Vladimir Radmanovic, who they have signed but for whom I can't find the exact figure, but since he's a veteran and on a min contract he'll only count 800k towards the cap numbers. That's 13 players, but with Rose out for most of the year, they almost certainly have to sign at least one more to see them through until he returns).
Say they end up at a total of $74.5m in salary for the year, that's $4.2m over the tax threshold. So look at it this way:
Rip Hamilton will cost them $5m in salary, plus $4.2m in dollar for dollar tax, plus $1m to waive him next summer when his contract becomes unguaranteed - $10.2m
If they send him to us, using our TPE, their salary drops down to $69.5m, they don't have to pay any tax (and will be eligible for some of the cash that is redistributed from the teams that
did pay tax). They will also be just about able to replace him with a veteran on a minimum deal without going back up over the tax threshold (I think some of them have mentioned Tracy McGrady as someone they have been linked with or want). That scenario costs them $800k or so and leaves them eligible for a tax sharing payment.
If they take salary back from us - even if it's just the $1.6m Vucevic is owed - they stay over the tax threshold of $70.31m and will end up paying tax rather than receiving a payment from the pot. If they take JJ they actually end up in a worse situation because he's owed roughly $1m more than Hamilton.
Some of the posters over there don't seem to be grasping the logic of the hypothetical trade - we would be taking an underperforming player off their hands and paying his $5m salary for the year, also saving them the tax costs of keeping that player on their books. This isn't a talent swap, it's a salary dump, and in order for us to take Richard Hamilton from them and pay his salary, they would have to send us some sort of compensation - in this case, given the direction Rob Hennigan seems to be heading, one would assume that compensation would be a first rounder.