[Originally posted on Hoopsworld, 15th October 2013.] Unguaranteed or partially guaranteed final seasons are quite the trend nowadays in the NBA, and they have these days almost completely superceded team options. In fact, excluding rookie scale contracts, there are only eight team options in the entire league, belonging to Chauncey Billups, Darius Morris, Timofey Mozgov, Marreese Speights, Carrick Felix, Chandler Parsons, Jae Crowder and Rodney Williams. All other contracts referred to in the press as ‘team options’ are, in fact, unguaranteed salaries. There are very few instances in which contracts must be guaranteed. In fact, there are only two; the first year of a signed-and-traded contract, and the first two years of a rookie scale contract (which must be guaranteed for a minimum of 80 percent of the scale amount). Nothing else has to be guaranteed. It is self evident why so many contracts are nonetheless fully guaranteed – players want that, and teams want players to want them. Yet the unguaranteed contract fad has its basis in logic. Essentially, unguaranteed contracts function much like team options do. However, there are some significant advantages to doing it in this way, which is why it happens. The differences: 1) Non-rookie scale team options have to be decided upon by the final day of the previous season. Seasons change over on July 1st, and thus team options must be decided on or before June 30th. This is not the case with unguaranteed contracts, which either have guarantee dates that can be negotiated to different dates, or which have no guarantee date at all. A lot of unguaranteed contracts have some guaranteed money, becoming fully guaranteed upon a certain date, or no guaranteed money at all becoming slowly guaranteed upon several dates; for players earning the minimum salary it is often the latter, […]
I hated the Marcus Camby trade. I hated it. I think everyone did, even Clippers fans. But I really hated it. I think about trades a lot. I should really have better things to do, but I don’t. So I spend a lot of time thinking about trades that have happened, moves that have been made, who would fit on which team, players that certain teams needed, who’ll sign where and for what, etc. But at not point did I think, “a current DPOY candidate and former winner, on an extremely fair value contract, is going to be moved for nothing more than a trade exception.” You just don’t consider these as possibilities, do you? But it happened. And it annoyed me. It annoyed me for one simple reason – the move was financially motivated, and I hate all purely financially-motivated moves. I wrote about as much here, and, in the interests of saving time, I’ll quote myself: When teams make bad personal [sic] moves to save money, purely as collateral damage from their own previous stupid move, then the fans become the victims to the folly that is the NBA and its old boy’s network. I hate any move that involves a team giving away an asset just to save money, with them deeming the financial saving as “necessary” due to their own cap mismanagement. That’s exactly what happened here – the Nuggets, perennial tax payers, were forced to start saving money by their ownership, and the best way for them to do this was to dump Camby’s salary for no return. The moved saved them $20 million this season, plus about the same next season, yet it saw an NBA team literally gifting away one of their best players at a position persistently devoid of much quality. Anyone’s […]
