Official Celtics 2020-21 Regular Season Thread

[Floody100]

Having Tatum out for these last 5 games has actually been a blessing in disguise for Jaylen. It sucks we lost both games to Philly but it gave Jaylen a chance to be the #1 option while being defended by one of the best in the game.

This version of Jaylen along with Tatum & Kemba looking like himself again is a damn scary trio. I can’t wait for Saturday night.

[SMTBSI]

We're a game back from the #1 seed in the East.

Our best three players haven't played together even once.

We've got a 28.5mil TPE in our back pocket.


I'm not saying we're going to win it all this year, but a lot of stuff is going to happen between now and the offseason. This season is just getting started.

[themoneyteam2]

TPE won’t be used until the offseason but still have the $5 million one that Ainge should absolutely use to find more shooting/scoring on that bench.

Still haven’t replaced Hayward and the bench is still pretty poor

[Parliament10]

We're a game back from the #1 seed in the East.

Our best three players haven't played together even once.

We've got a 28.5mil TPE in our back pocket.


I'm not saying we're going to win it all this year, but a lot of stuff is going to happen between now and the offseason. This season is just getting started.

You know, I was wondering about that TPE. I mean, we would have to trade someone away, to get it.
The only one worth Trading, and making enough, is Kemba. And even then, the other team may have to add another player.

[SMTBSI]

You know, I was wondering about that TPE. I mean, we would have to trade someone away, to get it.
The only one worth Trading, and making enough, is Kemba. And even then, the other team may have to add another player.

There's a bunch of angles, some more likely than others.

- BRK takes another major injury and we decide to accept the tax and go for it this year. We take a useful player like Barnes into the TPE, then use Smart+TT+youth+picks to salary match the next high level player who becomes available, keeping Kemba.

- We decide to move on from Kemba. As part of a three-team trade, big expiring like Otto Porter Jr. comes to us, and Kemba goes out. The Hayward TPE gets used up for OPJ, and we generate a new, even larger, Kemba-sized TPE ($34.4mil) with a refreshed expiration date.

- We simply only use part of the TPE, to take in (a) player(s) who do(es)n't put us over the tax line (by far most likely).

In all scenarios though, it's in our best interest to wait until the deadline, imo. The more time we give our young players to develop, the better an idea we'll have of which position we actually need the most help at, and the more assets we'll have to actually go and get a real upgrade.

[Disinformation]

- We decide to move on from Kemba. As part of a three-team trade, big expiring like Otto Porter Jr. comes to us, and Kemba goes out. The Hayward TPE gets used up for OPJ, and we generate a new, even larger, Kemba-sized TPE ($34.4mil) with a refreshed expiration date.

This made me erect.

[Captain_Caveman]

FYI, I don't think the TPE can be used as part of a larger trade. My understanding is it is the TPE and possibly picks/draft rights can be used for one or more players in one or more trades. That's it. It's in my understanding not to be combined with any additional outgoing players/salaries, even if done as a separate, parallel trade with the same team.

I've seen proposals where we send the TPE with Theis in the same trade, for instance. Can't do it, not even if one team gets the TPE and a 3rd team gets Theis. Nor can you trade the TPE to a team, and also send Theis to the same team in a different trade.

The Otto Porter and Kemba scenario works only as two different trades with two different teams. Which is fine, but how many teams can just absorb Kemba outright without sending any salary back to us, in order to generate that $34.4m TPE? Maybe Knicks, if they send Ntilikina/Burks/DSJ to a 3rd team in order to generate the necessary cap room?

[SMTBSI]

FYI, I don't think the TPE can be used as part of a larger trade. My understanding is it is the TPE and possibly picks/draft rights for one or more players in one or more trades. That's it. Not to be combined with any additional outgoing players/salaries, even if done as a separate, parallel trade with the same team.

I've seen proposals where we send the TPE with Theis in the same trade, for instance. Can't do it, not even if one team gets the TPE and a 3rd team gets Theis. Nor can you trade the TPE to a team, and also send Theis to the same team in a different trade.

The Otto Porter and Kemba scenario works only as two different trades with two different teams. Which is fine, but how many teams can just absorb Kemba outright without sending any salary back to us, in order to generate that $34.4m TPE? Maybe Knicks, if they send Ntilikina/Burks/DSJ to a 3rd team in order to generate the necessary cap room?

The key is that every team is allowed to interpret a trade in the way that is most beneficial to them. There is no necessity for each team to classify a series of moves even as the same number of trades as does their trading partner. For this reason, while you cannot aggregate the TPE with a player's salary, there is nothing preventing you from sending out a player at the same time you use up the TPE, since, from your perspective, you can classify those as two separate moves, even if they happen at once.

The simplest example is:
OPJ -> BOS -> Kemba -> 3rd team -> ~$30mil in salary from 3rd team -> CHI

Boston interprets the acquisition of OPJ as the conclusion of the non-simultaneous trade that netted the Hayward TPE, and the departure of Kemba as the beginning of a new non-simultaneous trade to be completed at a later date, generating a TPE for the size of Kemba's salary.

CHI and Mystery Team both interpret it as one simultaneous transaction. OPJ goes out for CHI and ~$30mil in salary comes in from Mystery Team, and $30mil in salary goes out for Mystery Team and Kemba comes in.

Obviously it can explode in complexity, with a lot more moving parts, picks, etc. Each team needs to "touch" both other teams in some way, which is why you often see the classic top-55 protected 2nds moving around as part of these things. But there's no issue of CBA legality, as long as the salary Mystery Team sends to Chicago is about the same magnitude as Kemba and OPJ.


Edit: well, the simplest example is OPJ -> BOS -> Kemba -> CHI, but I'm assuming CHI has no interest in Kemba, and we wouldn't send him to a bottom feeder anyway.

Edit2:

even if done as a separate, parallel trade with the same team.

Basically, this is not correct. There's no such restriction.

[Captain_Caveman]

FYI, I don't think the TPE can be used as part of a larger trade. My understanding is it is the TPE and possibly picks/draft rights for one or more players in one or more trades. That's it. Not to be combined with any additional outgoing players/salaries, even if done as a separate, parallel trade with the same team.

I've seen proposals where we send the TPE with Theis in the same trade, for instance. Can't do it, not even if one team gets the TPE and a 3rd team gets Theis. Nor can you trade the TPE to a team, and also send Theis to the same team in a different trade.

The Otto Porter and Kemba scenario works only as two different trades with two different teams. Which is fine, but how many teams can just absorb Kemba outright without sending any salary back to us, in order to generate that $34.4m TPE? Maybe Knicks, if they send Ntilikina/Burks/DSJ to a 3rd team in order to generate the necessary cap room?

The key is that every team is allowed to interpret a trade in the way that is most beneficial to them. There is no necessity for each team to classify a series of moves even as the same number of trades as does their trading partner. For this reason, while you cannot aggregate the TPE with a player's salary, there is nothing preventing you from sending out a player at the same time you use up the TPE, since, from your perspective, you can classify those as two separate moves, even if they happen at once.

The simplest example is:
OPJ -> BOS -> Kemba -> 3rd team -> ~$30mil in salary from 3rd team -> CHI

Boston interprets the acquisition of OPJ as the conclusion of the non-simultaneous trade that netted the Hayward TPE, and the departure of Kemba as the beginning of a new non-simultaneous trade to be completed at a later date, generating a TPE for the size of Kemba's salary.

CHI and Mystery Team both interpret it as one simultaneous transaction. OPJ goes out for CHI and ~$30mil in salary comes in from Mystery Team, and $30mil in salary goes out for Mystery Team and Kemba comes in.

Obviously it can explode in complexity, with a lot more moving parts, picks, etc. Each team needs to "touch" both other teams in some way, which is why you often see the classic top-55 protected 2nds moving around as part of these things. But there's no issue of CBA legality, as long as the salary Mystery Team sends to Chicago is about the same magnitude as Kemba and OPJ.


Edit: well, the simplest example is OPJ -> BOS -> Kemba -> CHI, but I'm assuming CHI has no interest in Kemba, and we wouldn't send him to a bottom feeder anyway.

Edit2:

even if done as a separate, parallel trade with the same team.

Basically, this is not correct. There's no such restriction.

Hmm... do you have an example of a trade working like this? Trying to figure why Kemba would not be the match on our end as opposed to the TPE? I can kinda see it, because with no other incoming salary, we would not need to utilize the 125%/150% rule (which I think is technically considered an exception), but still think that is iffy.

As to the two parallel trades, one example I can think of is when we tried to send KG/Pierce/Doc to the Clippers prior to the Nets deal. Even though it could have been delineated as two separate, fair trades (Doc for a 1st, KG/Pierce for players/picks), it was deemed as two trades whose values were dependent on each other. Silver literally went as far as putting a one year moratorium on trading KG/Pierce to the Clips after we sent Doc there. Maybe that has changed, or there is a workaround, but my understanding is that we would not be able to do TPE for Porter while also sending Theis to Chicago for, say... Denzel Valentine or a 2nd rounder. Not as one trade, or even as two separate ones.

[Parliament10]

FYI, I don't think the TPE can be used as part of a larger trade. My understanding is it is the TPE and possibly picks/draft rights for one or more players in one or more trades. That's it. Not to be combined with any additional outgoing players/salaries, even if done as a separate, parallel trade with the same team.

I've seen proposals where we send the TPE with Theis in the same trade, for instance. Can't do it, not even if one team gets the TPE and a 3rd team gets Theis. Nor can you trade the TPE to a team, and also send Theis to the same team in a different trade.

The Otto Porter and Kemba scenario works only as two different trades with two different teams. Which is fine, but how many teams can just absorb Kemba outright without sending any salary back to us, in order to generate that $34.4m TPE? Maybe Knicks, if they send Ntilikina/Burks/DSJ to a 3rd team in order to generate the necessary cap room?

The key is that every team is allowed to interpret a trade in the way that is most beneficial to them. There is no necessity for each team to classify a series of moves even as the same number of trades as does their trading partner. For this reason, while you cannot aggregate the TPE with a player's salary, there is nothing preventing you from sending out a player at the same time you use up the TPE, since, from your perspective, you can classify those as two separate moves, even if they happen at once.

The simplest example is:
OPJ -> BOS -> Kemba -> 3rd team -> ~$30mil in salary from 3rd team -> CHI

Boston interprets the acquisition of OPJ as the conclusion of the non-simultaneous trade that netted the Hayward TPE, and the departure of Kemba as the beginning of a new non-simultaneous trade to be completed at a later date, generating a TPE for the size of Kemba's salary.

CHI and Mystery Team both interpret it as one simultaneous transaction. OPJ goes out for CHI and ~$30mil in salary comes in from Mystery Team, and $30mil in salary goes out for Mystery Team and Kemba comes in.

Obviously it can explode in complexity, with a lot more moving parts, picks, etc. Each team needs to "touch" both other teams in some way, which is why you often see the classic top-55 protected 2nds moving around as part of these things. But there's no issue of CBA legality, as long as the salary Mystery Team sends to Chicago is about the same magnitude as Kemba and OPJ.


Edit: well, the simplest example is OPJ -> BOS -> Kemba -> CHI, but I'm assuming CHI has no interest in Kemba, and we wouldn't send him to a bottom feeder anyway.

Edit2:

even if done as a separate, parallel trade with the same team.

Basically, this is not correct. There's no such restriction.

Hmm... do you have an example of a trade working like this? Trying to figure why Kemba would not be the match on our end as opposed to the TPE? I can kinda see it, because with no other incoming salary, we would not need to utilize the 125%/150% rule (which I think is technically considered an exception), but still think that is iffy.

As to the two parallel trades, one example I can think of is when we tried to send KG/Pierce/Doc to the Clippers prior to the Nets deal. Even though it could have been delineated as two separate, fair trades (Doc for a 1st, KG/Pierce for players/picks), it was deemed as two trades whose values were dependent on each other. Silver literally went as far as putting a one year moratorium on trading KG/Pierce to the Clips after we sent Doc there. Maybe that has changed, or there is a workaround, but my understanding is that we would not be able to do TPE for Porter while also sending Theis to Chicago for, say... Denzel Valentine or a 2nd rounder. Not as one trade, or even as two separate ones.

Silver blocked that Trade, cause you can't Trade a Coach. Much less aggregate it with players.

As far as our TPE, it's what we would use, on who we bring in by Trade. That's my understanding.

[Parliament10]

Read on Twitter

Get ready to Vote.

[SMTBSI]

Hmm... do you have an example of a trade working like this? Trying to figure why Kemba would not be the match on our end as opposed to the TPE? I can kinda see it, because with no other incoming salary, we would not need to utilize the 125%/150% rule (which I think is technically considered an exception), but still think that is iffy.

As to the two parallel trades, one example I can think of is when we tried to send KG/Pierce/Doc to the Clippers prior to the Nets deal. Even though it could have been delineated as two separate, fair trades (Doc for a 1st, KG/Pierce for players/picks), it was deemed as two trades whose values were dependent on each other. Silver literally went as far as putting a one year moratorium on trading KG/Pierce to the Clips after we sent Doc there. Maybe that has changed, or there is a workaround, but my understanding is that we would not be able to do TPE for Porter while also sending Theis to Chicago for, say... Denzel Valentine or a 2nd rounder. Not as one trade, or even as two separate ones.

Silver blocked that Trade, cause you can't Trade a Coach. Much less aggregate it with players.

As far as our TPE, it's what we would use, on who we bring in by Trade. That's my understanding.

Yup. You actually can trade a coach. It just can't be aggregated with / contingent on anything else. Silver blocked us from completing the KG portion of the trade since he judged it was "contingent" on the Doc portion of the trade. Of course, the fact that we then went ahead and make the Doc portion anyway, without the ability to follow up with the other part it was supposedly "contingent" on, proved it was not contingent and that Silver was full of it.


Cap - while I'm not pulling anything off the top of my head, I've definitely seen tons of trades where TPEs are filled as part of a much larger collection of moving parts. In most cases it's something much more modest that doesn't even get remarked upon, like one team slotting a ~$2mil player into some tiny trade exception they generated earlier on, as part of a trade where a half dozen salaries of various sizes are moving around. You rarely get these gigantic $30mil TPEs (basically never, I guess - Kemba's was the largest in history, wasn't it?). But the principle is the same whether the TPE is 1.5mil or 28.5mil.

For what it's worth, here's what Coon has to say:

.
87. What is a non-simultaneous trade?

A common misconception is that players cannot be traded together in a non-simultaneous trade. This is not true -- players can be traded together as long as the outgoing salaries are not aggregated. For example, trading two $10 million players for a $20 million player requires aggregation, and therefore must be simultaneous. But trading two $10 million players for a $12 million player can be accomplished without aggregation -- one of the $10 million players would be used to acquire the $12 million player in a simultaneous trade, and the other $10 million player would be traded for "nothing," in a non-simultaneous trade, gaining the team a $10 million trade exception.

Here is a more complicated example of a legal non-simultaneous trade: Team A is a taxpaying team with a $4 million trade exception from a previous trade, and a $10 million player it currently wants to trade. Team B is a taxpaying team with three players making $4 million, $5 million and $7 million, and these two teams want to complete a three-for-one trade with these four players. This trade is legal -- the $5 million and $7 million players together make less than the 125% plus $100,000 allowed for the $10 million player ($12.6 million), and the $4 million player fits within the $4 million trade exception. So the $4 million player actually completes the previous, non-simultaneous trade, and Team A is left trading its $10 million player for Team B's $5 million and $7 million players in a separate, simultaneous trade. From Team B's perspective there is also a simultaneous and a non-simultaneous trade -- it aggregates its $4 million and $5 million players to acquire Team A's $10 million player in a simultaneous trade, and it sends the $7 million player to Team A for "nothing" in a separate non-simultaneous trade, thereby receiving a $7 million trade exception.

I find that fans who have familiarity with the CBA tend to begin to overestimate how restrictive its trade rules are. There are plenty of restrictions, of course, but the "Each team is allowed to interpret the trade in the way that is most beneficial to them" is pretty powerful, and that's where guys like Zarren make their money, figuring out exactly how to spin things to their best advantage.

[AKFO]

Hmm... do you have an example of a trade working like this? Trying to figure why Kemba would not be the match on our end as opposed to the TPE? I can kinda see it, because with no other incoming salary, we would not need to utilize the 125%/150% rule (which I think is technically considered an exception), but still think that is iffy.

As to the two parallel trades, one example I can think of is when we tried to send KG/Pierce/Doc to the Clippers prior to the Nets deal. Even though it could have been delineated as two separate, fair trades (Doc for a 1st, KG/Pierce for players/picks), it was deemed as two trades whose values were dependent on each other. Silver literally went as far as putting a one year moratorium on trading KG/Pierce to the Clips after we sent Doc there. Maybe that has changed, or there is a workaround, but my understanding is that we would not be able to do TPE for Porter while also sending Theis to Chicago for, say... Denzel Valentine or a 2nd rounder. Not as one trade, or even as two separate ones.

Silver blocked that Trade, cause you can't Trade a Coach. Much less aggregate it with players.

As far as our TPE, it's what we would use, on who we bring in by Trade. That's my understanding.

Yup. You actually can trade a coach. It just can't be aggregated with / contingent on anything else. Silver blocked us from completing the KG portion of the trade since he judged it was "contingent" on the Doc portion of the trade. Of course, the fact that we then went ahead and make the Doc portion anyway, without the ability to follow up with the other part it was supposedly "contingent" on, proved it was not contingent and that Silver was full of it.


Cap - while I'm not pulling anything off the top of my head, I've definitely seen tons of trades where TPEs are filled as part of a much larger collection of moving parts. In most cases it's something much more modest that doesn't even get remarked upon, like one team slotting a ~$2mil player into some tiny trade exception they generated earlier on, as part of a trade where a half dozen salaries of various sizes are moving around. You rarely get these gigantic $30mil TPEs (basically never, I guess - Kemba's was the largest in history, wasn't it?). But the principle is the same whether the TPE is 1.5mil or 28.5mil.

For what it's worth, here's what Coon has to say:

.
87. What is a non-simultaneous trade?

A common misconception is that players cannot be traded together in a non-simultaneous trade. This is not true -- players can be traded together as long as the outgoing salaries are not aggregated. For example, trading two $10 million players for a $20 million player requires aggregation, and therefore must be simultaneous. But trading two $10 million players for a $12 million player can be accomplished without aggregation -- one of the $10 million players would be used to acquire the $12 million player in a simultaneous trade, and the other $10 million player would be traded for "nothing," in a non-simultaneous trade, gaining the team a $10 million trade exception.

Here is a more complicated example of a legal non-simultaneous trade: Team A is a taxpaying team with a $4 million trade exception from a previous trade, and a $10 million player it currently wants to trade. Team B is a taxpaying team with three players making $4 million, $5 million and $7 million, and these two teams want to complete a three-for-one trade with these four players. This trade is legal -- the $5 million and $7 million players together make less than the 125% plus $100,000 allowed for the $10 million player ($12.6 million), and the $4 million player fits within the $4 million trade exception. So the $4 million player actually completes the previous, non-simultaneous trade, and Team A is left trading its $10 million player for Team B's $5 million and $7 million players in a separate, simultaneous trade. From Team B's perspective there is also a simultaneous and a non-simultaneous trade -- it aggregates its $4 million and $5 million players to acquire Team A's $10 million player in a simultaneous trade, and it sends the $7 million player to Team A for "nothing" in a separate non-simultaneous trade, thereby receiving a $7 million trade exception.

I find that fans who have familiarity with the CBA tend to begin to overestimate how restrictive its trade rules are. There are plenty of restrictions, of course, but the "Each team is allowed to interpret the trade in the way that is most beneficial to them" is pretty powerful, and that's where guys like Zarren make their money, figuring out exactly how to spin things to their best advantage.

I remember we somehow got a trade exception from the KG/Pierce Nets trade; was that something similar?

[ConstableGeneva]

Hmm... do you have an example of a trade working like this? Trying to figure why Kemba would not be the match on our end as opposed to the TPE? I can kinda see it, because with no other incoming salary, we would not need to utilize the 125%/150% rule (which I think is technically considered an exception), but still think that is iffy.

As to the two parallel trades, one example I can think of is when we tried to send KG/Pierce/Doc to the Clippers prior to the Nets deal. Even though it could have been delineated as two separate, fair trades (Doc for a 1st, KG/Pierce for players/picks), it was deemed as two trades whose values were dependent on each other. Silver literally went as far as putting a one year moratorium on trading KG/Pierce to the Clips after we sent Doc there. Maybe that has changed, or there is a workaround, but my understanding is that we would not be able to do TPE for Porter while also sending Theis to Chicago for, say... Denzel Valentine or a 2nd rounder. Not as one trade, or even as two separate ones.

Silver blocked that Trade, cause you can't Trade a Coach. Much less aggregate it with players.

As far as our TPE, it's what we would use, on who we bring in by Trade. That's my understanding.

Yup. You actually can trade a coach. It just can't be aggregated with / contingent on anything else. Silver blocked us from completing the KG portion of the trade since he judged it was "contingent" on the Doc portion of the trade. Of course, the fact that we then went ahead and make the Doc portion anyway, without the ability to follow up with the other part it was supposedly "contingent" on, proved it was not contingent and that Silver was full of it.


Cap - while I'm not pulling anything off the top of my head, I've definitely seen tons of trades where TPEs are filled as part of a much larger collection of moving parts. In most cases it's something much more modest that doesn't even get remarked upon, like one team slotting a ~$2mil player into some tiny trade exception they generated earlier on, as part of a trade where a half dozen salaries of various sizes are moving around. You rarely get these gigantic $30mil TPEs (basically never, I guess - Kemba's was the largest in history, wasn't it?). But the principle is the same whether the TPE is 1.5mil or 28.5mil.

For what it's worth, here's what Coon has to say:

.
87. What is a non-simultaneous trade?

A common misconception is that players cannot be traded together in a non-simultaneous trade. This is not true -- players can be traded together as long as the outgoing salaries are not aggregated. For example, trading two $10 million players for a $20 million player requires aggregation, and therefore must be simultaneous. But trading two $10 million players for a $12 million player can be accomplished without aggregation -- one of the $10 million players would be used to acquire the $12 million player in a simultaneous trade, and the other $10 million player would be traded for "nothing," in a non-simultaneous trade, gaining the team a $10 million trade exception.

Here is a more complicated example of a legal non-simultaneous trade: Team A is a taxpaying team with a $4 million trade exception from a previous trade, and a $10 million player it currently wants to trade. Team B is a taxpaying team with three players making $4 million, $5 million and $7 million, and these two teams want to complete a three-for-one trade with these four players. This trade is legal -- the $5 million and $7 million players together make less than the 125% plus $100,000 allowed for the $10 million player ($12.6 million), and the $4 million player fits within the $4 million trade exception. So the $4 million player actually completes the previous, non-simultaneous trade, and Team A is left trading its $10 million player for Team B's $5 million and $7 million players in a separate, simultaneous trade. From Team B's perspective there is also a simultaneous and a non-simultaneous trade -- it aggregates its $4 million and $5 million players to acquire Team A's $10 million player in a simultaneous trade, and it sends the $7 million player to Team A for "nothing" in a separate non-simultaneous trade, thereby receiving a $7 million trade exception.

I find that fans who have familiarity with the CBA tend to begin to overestimate how restrictive its trade rules are. There are plenty of restrictions, of course, but the "Each team is allowed to interpret the trade in the way that is most beneficial to them" is pretty powerful, and that's where guys like Zarren make their money, figuring out exactly how to spin things to their best advantage.

Teams have definitely used their existing TPEs to absorb incoming salary in the same transaction where they sent out a player or two. Pretty sure there were a few of those examples in the recent offseason but the NBA don't release the details of how the trade was handled from both/all sides of the deal. You'd have to sift through tweets of beat writers who have cap/CBA knowledge.

I believe when they say you "can't combine TPE w/ player salary or other exceptions in a trade", it just means you can't absorb a higher salary than your existing TPE + 100K by combining it with another TPE or player salary.

For example, we can't combine the Hayward TPE ($28.5) w/ Theis ($5M) so we can trade for Anthony Davis who's making $32.7M.

[SMTBSI]

Spoiler:

Silver blocked that Trade, cause you can't Trade a Coach. Much less aggregate it with players.

As far as our TPE, it's what we would use, on who we bring in by Trade. That's my understanding.

Yup. You actually can trade a coach. It just can't be aggregated with / contingent on anything else. Silver blocked us from completing the KG portion of the trade since he judged it was "contingent" on the Doc portion of the trade. Of course, the fact that we then went ahead and make the Doc portion anyway, without the ability to follow up with the other part it was supposedly "contingent" on, proved it was not contingent and that Silver was full of it.


Cap - while I'm not pulling anything off the top of my head, I've definitely seen tons of trades where TPEs are filled as part of a much larger collection of moving parts. In most cases it's something much more modest that doesn't even get remarked upon, like one team slotting a ~$2mil player into some tiny trade exception they generated earlier on, as part of a trade where a half dozen salaries of various sizes are moving around. You rarely get these gigantic $30mil TPEs (basically never, I guess - Kemba's was the largest in history, wasn't it?). But the principle is the same whether the TPE is 1.5mil or 28.5mil.

For what it's worth, here's what Coon has to say:

.
87. What is a non-simultaneous trade?

A common misconception is that players cannot be traded together in a non-simultaneous trade. This is not true -- players can be traded together as long as the outgoing salaries are not aggregated. For example, trading two $10 million players for a $20 million player requires aggregation, and therefore must be simultaneous. But trading two $10 million players for a $12 million player can be accomplished without aggregation -- one of the $10 million players would be used to acquire the $12 million player in a simultaneous trade, and the other $10 million player would be traded for "nothing," in a non-simultaneous trade, gaining the team a $10 million trade exception.

Here is a more complicated example of a legal non-simultaneous trade: Team A is a taxpaying team with a $4 million trade exception from a previous trade, and a $10 million player it currently wants to trade. Team B is a taxpaying team with three players making $4 million, $5 million and $7 million, and these two teams want to complete a three-for-one trade with these four players. This trade is legal -- the $5 million and $7 million players together make less than the 125% plus $100,000 allowed for the $10 million player ($12.6 million), and the $4 million player fits within the $4 million trade exception. So the $4 million player actually completes the previous, non-simultaneous trade, and Team A is left trading its $10 million player for Team B's $5 million and $7 million players in a separate, simultaneous trade. From Team B's perspective there is also a simultaneous and a non-simultaneous trade -- it aggregates its $4 million and $5 million players to acquire Team A's $10 million player in a simultaneous trade, and it sends the $7 million player to Team A for "nothing" in a separate non-simultaneous trade, thereby receiving a $7 million trade exception.

I find that fans who have familiarity with the CBA tend to begin to overestimate how restrictive its trade rules are. There are plenty of restrictions, of course, but the "Each team is allowed to interpret the trade in the way that is most beneficial to them" is pretty powerful, and that's where guys like Zarren make their money, figuring out exactly how to spin things to their best advantage.

I remember we somehow got a trade exception from the KG/Pierce Nets trade; was that something similar?

While I don't now remember exactly how it got generated this many years after the fact, that was the first time I remember really nailing the details of a trade myself before they were being reported in the media. I had us getting that $10mil TPE before I saw it reported anywhere, or being written about on here. I was in the early days of my CBA research, and I couldn't figure out if I was making a mistake since literally no one else was talking about it.

Anyway, it's not exactly quite what Cap was questioning, since it involved the generation of a TPE, not the consumption of one. But, it was definitely an example of each team "interpreting" a trade a different way - one team using certain salaries to match their incoming money, and the other team using different salaries to match theirs, leaving a "gap" in the trade, where one team is sending someone out for "nothing" from their perspective, while the other team isn't acquiring someone for "nothing".

[SMTBSI]

Teams have definitely used their existing TPEs to absorb incoming salary in the same transaction where they sent out a player or two. Pretty sure there were a few of those examples in the recent offseason but the NBA don't release the details of how the trade was handled from both/all sides of the deal. You'd have to sift through tweets of beat writers who have cap/CBA knowledge.

I believe when they say you "can't combine TPE w/ player salary or other exceptions in a trade", it just means you can't absorb a higher salary than your existing TPE + 100K by combining it with another TPE or player salary.

For example, we can't combine the Hayward TPE ($28.5) w/ Theis ($5M) so we can trade for Anthony Davis who's making $32.7M.

Side note: if anyone has a good resource for historical accountings of trades, let me know. As of right now, I always have to do like the Constable says - google/twitter searches, and the BBRef whack-a-mole game, to reconstruct things.

[ConstableGeneva]

Teams have definitely used their existing TPEs to absorb incoming salary in the same transaction where they sent out a player or two. Pretty sure there were a few of those examples in the recent offseason but the NBA don't release the details of how the trade was handled from both/all sides of the deal. You'd have to sift through tweets of beat writers who have cap/CBA knowledge.

I believe when they say you "can't combine TPE w/ player salary or other exceptions in a trade", it just means you can't absorb a higher salary than your existing TPE + 100K by combining it with another TPE or player salary.

For example, we can't combine the Hayward TPE ($28.5) w/ Theis ($5M) so we can trade for Anthony Davis who's making $32.7M.

Side note: if anyone has a good resource for historical accountings of trades, let me know. As of right now, I always have to do like the Constable says - google/twitter searches, and the BBRef whack-a-mole game, to reconstruct things.

Bobby Marks and Albert Nahmad are my go-to on Twitter but it's difficult going through old tweets. NBA, BBRef, and RealGM sites all have transaction listings but without the specific cap gymnastics used.

[3D Chess]

Are there any paid sites that have this information that could be useful to the likes of Celtics board legends ConstableGeneva, SMTBSI, CrowderKeg etc? If so, I (and I imagine a few other board regulars) would be willing to chip in to get you guys access to those sites. Have thought about proposing something like this for some of the stat sites that are now behind paywalls. Thoughts?

[Captain_Caveman]

For what it's worth, here's what Coon has to say:

.
87. What is a non-simultaneous trade?

A common misconception is that players cannot be traded together in a non-simultaneous trade. This is not true -- players can be traded together as long as the outgoing salaries are not aggregated. For example, trading two $10 million players for a $20 million player requires aggregation, and therefore must be simultaneous. But trading two $10 million players for a $12 million player can be accomplished without aggregation -- one of the $10 million players would be used to acquire the $12 million player in a simultaneous trade, and the other $10 million player would be traded for "nothing," in a non-simultaneous trade, gaining the team a $10 million trade exception.

Here is a more complicated example of a legal non-simultaneous trade: Team A is a taxpaying team with a $4 million trade exception from a previous trade, and a $10 million player it currently wants to trade. Team B is a taxpaying team with three players making $4 million, $5 million and $7 million, and these two teams want to complete a three-for-one trade with these four players. This trade is legal -- the $5 million and $7 million players together make less than the 125% plus $100,000 allowed for the $10 million player ($12.6 million), and the $4 million player fits within the $4 million trade exception. So the $4 million player actually completes the previous, non-simultaneous trade, and Team A is left trading its $10 million player for Team B's $5 million and $7 million players in a separate, simultaneous trade. From Team B's perspective there is also a simultaneous and a non-simultaneous trade -- it aggregates its $4 million and $5 million players to acquire Team A's $10 million player in a simultaneous trade, and it sends the $7 million player to Team A for "nothing" in a separate non-simultaneous trade, thereby receiving a $7 million trade exception.

Ahh, thanks.

[Fencer reregistered]

As well as they scored during the three-game win streak they carried into Wednesday night, Smart sees a large need for improvement in getting back when those shots don’t fall. And he pins at least part of the issue of transition defense on the double-big lineups the Celtics have been playing.

“It’s transition. We’re 28th in the league in transition and three in half-court defense — that’s it right there, it’s transition defense,” he said. “We have to do a better job. It’s weird, because we’re playing with two bigs a lot, and where our system is our bigs are supposed to crash — we’ve got both of our bigs crashing and at least one of our wings crashing, or get caught staring in the corners watching our bigs work down there and get to the bounce and everything, and guys were just getting behind. Once we clean up that transition defense, everything else will come back to fruition. It will come back to the standards of what we’re capable of doing.”

https://www.bostonherald.com/2021/01/27/0127-bh-s-celticsnotes/

I'm inclined to trust Smart's stated analysis of transition defense off of missed shots. That said, is the fraction of transition defense opportunities related to live-ball turnovers high, to an extent that distorts the numbers?

And I'm surprised by his claim of how good the halfcourt defense has been.