GeetIt wrote:So how do bird rights work? Can the clippers go over the salary resigning the likes of Tobias Harris and Nikola Vucevic after they sign a max free agent? Is there a deadline to resign bird rights eligible players? Because if clippers can go over the cap next off season by not signing Tobias until they get their max players inked this kind of seems like a loophole. Hold as many bird rights players as possible with an expiring contract. Use the salary cap space for other free agents. Then go over the cap by resigning the current players. I would definitely trade for Vucevic if this was the case. This is all assuming that Ballmer is willing to pay.
It's not really a loophole but more of a minor benefit in most years. Yes, the Clippers can go over the salary cap to re-sign players they have Bird rights to such as Tobias Harris and, theoretically, Nikola Vucevic as long as we don't reach the hard cap, which for the purpose of this exercise won't apply. I don't believe there is a deadline to re-sign a player using his Bird rights, but impending unrestricted free agents such as Tobias and Vucevic can sign with any team they want once free agency opens and the respective Bird rights expire as soon as that happens, obviously.
The problem with your scenario and why it's not really a loophole is that teams who have players they have Bird rights to are also assigned a cap hold for each player. The cap hold goes against the salary cap at I think an added 20-25% of their most recent season salary until such players re-sign with their team, sign a deal with a new team or have their rights renounced by the team holding their Bird rights.
In your hypothetical scenario, let's say we acquired Vucevic for Marcin Gortat and a future first-round pick with multiple protections. Gortat actually makes a little more this season than Vucevic does, but it really doesn't give us practical cap savings since we're most likely going to renounce Gortat's rights once the season ends thus freeing up cap space while we'd have to retain Vucevic's current salary + 20-25% in order to retain his Bird rights.
If we retained Tobias, Vucevic and don't trade away Danilo Gallinari, the Clippers won't have enough free cap space to sign even one premier free agent because of their respective cap holds. Of course, we can decide to renounce the rights to either Tobias or Vucevic or even both should we come to an agreement with a premier free agent or two but we wouldn't be able to sign such free agents and retain both Tobias and Vucevic as well. We could, however, theoretically sign someone like Kawhi Leonard and re-sign both Tobias and Vucevic, but only if we traded Gallo away.
If you want an illustration of how signing two max free agents while retaining one of Tobias, Gallo or Vucevic would work, I refer you to my previous post citing an Athletic article in the 2019-20 Free Agent thread. From there, you can mix-and-match using the principles laid out.
