The worst part about maintaining the internet’s premier NBA salary information resource is that the information is never static. It is ever-changing. Due to things such as conditional guarantees, trade kickers and the like, rarely do contracts ever stay the same. This is particularly true because of the science of performance incentives. Performance incentives can be included in contracts for almost any reason, including (but not limited to) All-Star selections, championship, or team wins. The only rules are that any numerical definitions are specific, and that they are for positive achievements only (although God knows why you’d want it otherwise). For example, Kirk Hinrich has performance incentives based on any First Team All-Defensive placements that he gets, and Matt Bonner’s just-expired contract was based around his three point and free throw percentages. These incentives are deemed by the league to be either “likely” or “unlikely”. If they are deemed “likely”, then they appear on a team’s cap number for the upcoming season; if they are deemed “unlikely”, then they are not. This is why this information is important to cap space calculations and the like. The likehood of incentives is decided by the league using one simple criterion; whether the player achieved the incentive last year or not. In the case of team-based incentives such as team win totals, this can be changed when a player is traded to a new team; this is perhaps most famously demonstrated by the case of Devean George, whose team win-based incentive went from “likely” to “unlikely” when he was traded from Dallas to Golden State, thereby costing him $200,000. Such is the risk. Cap hits based on performance incentives are modified during the moratorium, due to a re-evaluation of their incentives. (That’s what the moratorium is for – bookkeeping.) Some previously deemed “unlikely” […]
February 13th, 2008. Wednesday. Raining. The Dallas Mavericks are tootling along with a 34-17 record. They’re pretty good, and perhaps they know it, because they’re suddenly overwhelmed with the urge to do something drastic. A veteran team with only one good young player decides on a plan to get older. The Mavericks decide that Jason Kidd is a significant upgrade over Devin Harris, and work out a variety of scenarios that see them trade Devin and two future first-round draft picks for Kidd. They’re probably wrong, but they work hard at it anyway, determined to obtain a player that two years ago would have been a steal. But not so much now. Eventually, they stumble upon a scenario that both they and the Nets can agree upon. Dallas agrees to trade Harris, the picks, cash, DeSagana Diop, Maurice Ager, Jerry Stackhouse and Devean George to the Nets in exchange for Kidd and Malik Allen. The fillers are largely meaningless; outside of Harris, only Diop is a significant player for the Mavericks. The core of the deal is Harris for Kidd, and both teams seem pretty happy with that. The fundamental pieces are together, peripherals of the long-awaited deal are finally in place, and everyone’s a winner. Things then get a bit weird. Through a hitherto little-known technicality, one of the lesser components of the deal – backup forward George – has the power to veto the trade. George re-signed with the Mavericks in the previous offseason to a one-year contract, and Dallas will have early Bird rights on him when his contract expires. However, if George gets traded, the recipient team will lose his Bird rights if they trade for him, which reduces George’s chances of getting handily paid next season. [Let’s pretend for a minute that such chances existed.] […]
