Post#1045 » by GrandAdmiralDan » Thu Jul 11, 2019 1:01 pm
I haven't finished reading this thread, but I have seen mentioned that we could have just paid Hill about $700k less in year one and we would have been able to generate and keep the TPE from the Brogdon S&T with proper order of operations.
It is true that one way to do this would have been to lower the first year salary of Hill (or Brook Lopez, or a combination between both) by around $700k.
But an even better way to do this would have been to first sign Hill (before Brook Lopez) to a first year salary that had a base salary reduced by $700k in exchange for one or more "unlikely" bonuses that Hill and his agent were confident would be achieved. The unlikely bonuses could have been for up to 15% of his base salary, which would have been enough to create the extra $700k in room. It an only be one of Hill or Lopez you do this for, because when signing a player into cap space, base salary plus unlikely bonus must fit within that space. But once signed, only base salary is used to calculate that signed players cap hold. Unlikely bonus is excluded, creating more cap space to sign the subsequent player.
I choose to do that with Hill rather than Brook, because Brook achieved much more than Hill did last season and it would be harder, but not impossible, to construct unlikely bonuses that Brook would be confident he would achieve. A bonus (has to be positive) is considered unlikely if it wouldn't have been achieved the prior season. In practical terms, the easiest for Hill would be something like a certain amount of total assists that exceeded what he produced last season (total season, not just after we traded for him).
As I said right away at the time of this S&T, generating and keeping a TPE from the Brogdon S&T was absolutely doable with proper order of operations.
Unlike Hammond, Horst has generally been pretty savvy when manipulating the CBA in our favor. But this is a disappointing failure.
This is either on Horst and his front office team for lack of knowledge and/or creativity, or Horst presented these options to ownership and ownership told him not to execute in that fashion as they didn't want access to a vehicle that could be later used to put us over the luxury tax threshold. If we were sitting on that TPE right now, pressure would have built to use it in its entirety at some point prior to trade deadline, which would have meant spending more money this season and/or going over the luxury tax threshold (there would have been other creative steps taken to get us back under this season).
Very disappointing.
97-98
Nick Van Exel (LAL) on defending the Stockton-Malone pick-and-roll: "Yeah,
I got a way to defend it. Bring a bat to the game and kill one of them."
