Re: The Boston Celtics Mailing List Digest V9 #332

["James A. Hill" <jahill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Pete, You can't sign a free agent and go over the salary cap.  You can only
sign a free agent if your under the cap, or for a "cap exception" like the
$1 Million or $4.5 million.

The Celtics are over the cap and when KA's contract expires we would still
be over the cap with our other players, I believe.  You can only sign your
own FA (The Bird Rule) and go over the cap.  So we couldn't just let his
contract expire and then sign  a FA to his salary amount.

Now, we could trade, hypothetically, Baker for a Sprewell or another large
contract player by matching the current year out going contract with a
current year incoming contract within something like $100K.  (As long as
they other player isn't a "base year" player. I.e. In his first year of a
new contract which only counts for 50% in a trade if you over the cap.)

This cap rule is why some teams don't want to sign their own guy, if they
will be under the cap, until they have signed the targeted FA up to the cap.
Then they can go over the cap to sign their own guy and get both.  But if
they sign their own FA and exceed the cap they can't sign anyone else except
for the exception $ which won't really bring you a potential star player.

So when you see some of these players complaining that their team won't
renegotiate their existing contact and show them "respect" after the team
has spent 3 years developing cap flexibility you know why.  If the player
was interested in winning instead of himself then he would wait until his
contract expired, let his team sign a potential star and then sign him to
his big contract.  However if the player gets injured in the last year of
that existing contract he will lose potential $ value which is why the
player wants to sign an extension with two years left in the first place.
It takes guts to take that gamble if your a player when your talking about
signing a potential $80 million contract extension.

Jordan and a few others understand that they need other all star caliber
players around them to win.  This is why Jordan was one of the most
underpaid players in the league, salary wise, during the Bulls first few
Championships.  So the Bulls could pay others to play with him until they
got their Bird rights and the Bulls could go over the cap and everybody
could get paid.  (Jordan also made over $20+ million a year in endorsements
at the time so it's not like he was going hungry.)

So this is what the Baker trade did.  It preserved KA's salary "slot", that
was being used over the cap, in one single player for potential use for
another large single contract in a trade, if Baker doesn't work out or if
someone wants him more then we do.  If Baker regains his 4 year All Star
play it becomes a "grand slam" of a trade as we benefit two ways.

There isn't much downside either way "unless" they could have traded KA for
a better player(s) with a similar contract or if they could have traded him
for a combination of players where at least one of the traded for players
would justify an extension to go over the cap, but having enough expiring
contracts already so you could do so without exceeding the luxury tax
threshold.

Please anyone correct me if I got some of this wrong, but this is how I
understand how it works.  If I'm right I'm open to job offers by any GM that
works for the Celtics...

<Jim

>Odd trade. I would have just held on to Kenny and let his contract expire,
if
>we couldnt find a few suitable players for him.

>I have read over the CBA FAQ and I still think that such a move would have
>benefited our team. I don't understand why we needed to "use" that salary.
>Couldn't we have just signed a free agent the year after?