trade and salary cap implications

[Ken Kokubo <klist@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

OK...this is a real quicky look so please chime in for accuracy sake, but 
here goes...

According to Patricia's and hoopsworld sites and based on 2003 salaries...

We were carrying a team salary of $52,423,200 after the trade $48,650,030 
with a league cap predicted to be around $43mil

The end of this year Eric Williams and Chris Mills come off the books and 
combine for ~$11mil in salary, which would put us at ~$37mil, giving us 
about $6 mil to sign a free agent. If we hadn't done the trade we would 
have no available money to sign a FA (making the assumption that Antoine 
would most definitely not have opted out of a max contact). $52mil minus 
Eric Williams @ $5mil = $47mil = over cap and no FA signings.

So 3 options.

a) Do nothing and spend $6million on someone at the end of the year.
b) Trade both EW and Chris Mills for a big money player on a team looking 
to dump salary and rebuild in '04.
c) Trade both EW and Chris Mills for player(s) whose contract ends in '06 
(when Baker, Waltah, and Jumaine Jones come off the cap as well).

OK some more options...do nothing at all, trade them for other role players 
that don't help cap relief at all, use them as trade fillers with young guy(s).

a) not many impact players at 6mil but you never know, can't be combined 
with the exemptions IIRC.
b) best if we can find the right player.
c) risky, you could structure it to have ~30million to sign people, but how 
far under the cap we'll be is impossible to tell as you need to sign 
existing (untested) players to larger contracts, we don't know what the cap 
figure will be, who will be available, and that's a far way off to be 
planning on something like this if your halfway there (to legitimacy) already.

So pre trade we had EWill @ $5mil in trade commodity ("salary cap" trade 
value only no other valuation taken into account) with no FA signing room, 
now we have $11mil in trade commodity or $6mil FA signing power at the end 
of the year.

Ken