Rosters are mostly set after this summer’s free agency period, and teams are just mostly now nibbling around the edge. Aside from a couple of training-camp decisions, most players are now on the teams they will be with through at last January, as rarely do teams make mid-season changes prior to that. Come January, though, and trade season will begin. Between then and the trade deadline at the start of February, many a player will be on notice, re-assignable at the drop of a hat as teams change and tweak directions based on the changing information throughout the first half. And then after that, in the time between the trade deadline and 1st March (a key date for player eligibility; if a player is on an NBA team’s roster at the end of that day, then that is the only team they can play for in the playoffs), some veteran players every season seem to get bought out, giving back money for the freedom to choose a team better suited for their needs, often going from a lottery team to a playoff team in the process. There follows a look at some of the players who may fall victim to the latter practice. Jeremy Lin, Atlanta Hawks Lin was acquired by the Hawks into cap space, without much in the way of sweetener going the other way. Normally, players traded into cap space are either very good or highly unwanted, and with the latter, a first-round pick (or more) is usually traded with their contract as sweetener. Not so with Lin, onto whom the Brooklyn Nets stuck only a 2025 second-round pick in moving him to Atlanta. Lin is an unlikely Hawk, a now-veteran reserve point guard without upside or team control on his contract, who nevertheless replaces Dennis Schroeder […]
The Brooklyn Nets’ ill-fated trade for Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett in July 2013 left the team with bleak short, medium and long-term futures. On the court, the pair did not work out. Ageing very quickly after leaving Boston, the two never bettered the team; Brooklyn only got as far as a 44-38 regular season record the season immediately after the trade, which was actually a backwards step on their 49-33 campaign previously, and loafed to a mere 38-44 the season after that. Thereafter, the bottom fell out completely, and the Nets have not cracked 30 wins since. The bigger problem, though, was off the court. To acquire the duo (plus veteran reserve Jason Terry, young forward D.J. White who was soon out of the league, and the #57 pick in the 2017 NBA Draft), the Nets gave up a bevy of assets. They gave up unprotected firsts in all of 2014, 2016 and 2018, and only because of the rule (colloquially named the Stepien Rule) that prevents teams from leaving themselves without a first-round pick in consecutive future seasons were they able to keep a first-round pick in 2017. Even then, though, they traded the right to swap it. In total, this trade cost Brooklyn all of James Young (#17, 2014), Jaylen Brown (#3, 2016), Markelle Fultz (#1, 2017; or Jayson Tatum at #3 if you’d prefer) and Collin Sexton (#8, 2018). With all due respect to Aleksandar Vezenkov, the saving grace of the #57 pick in 2017 coming back the other way probably doesn’t salve the pain much. And that was a lot to pay for no discernible improvement. Ever since that trade, the team has been in a quagmire, with an assets cupboard barer than any asset cupboard should ever be, and no obvious way out of […]
In light of one or both of these two being about to be traded, there exists a new realm of questions about this two unusual, nearly-novel deals. The questions surround what they’re being paid, and what they’re being charged to the salary cap. People don’t know which set of figures to believe, and the confusions stems from the fact that those two questions actually have two different answers. “Salary” and “cap number” are usually assumed to be synonymous with each other on account of the fact that they normally are, with rare exceptions. Occasionally, exceptions can be found in buyout agreements (I believe, though cannot say decisively, that the Blazers were still playing Shawn Kemp up to and including last season), but not with valid contracts. These deals, then, are an exception. And that’s why they need clarifying. Using the Arenas provision, Lin and Asik signed for the most Houston could give them over three years – $25,123,938. The contracts called for them to be paid an even $5 million in 2012/13, $5.225 million in 2013/14, and $14,898,938 in 2014/15. For the purposes of where we’re going, it doesn’t matter how these figure was arrived at, only what they are and where we’re going. The cap number for these contracts calls for that $25,123,938 contract to be split evenly across all three years, i.e. $8,374,646 each season. This is true despite of the actual payment schedule being what it is above. So when someone asks “what are Lin and Asik getting paid?”, the answer could be either, technically. On a literal interpretation of the question, the payment schedule is the right answer. Yet when people ask that, what they really want to know, even if they don’t know there’s a difference, is what is their cap number. That’s the one […]
Roddy Buckets The final year of Jason Terry’s contract is only partially guaranteed. Only $5 million of $10,658,000 is guaranteed; the rest becomes guaranteed dependent on how many minutes Terry plays. Terry’s contract will become guaranteed if he plays in more than 60 games and more than 1,500 minutes next year; if he doesn’t, and he’s waived before next July 15th, then whoever owns him could get a break of a few million dollars. I’m telling you this because Boobwar is making Terry available. Mouhammad Faye Faye turns 25 in a couple of months, and just finished a season where he averaged 10/5 for Southern Methodist University in Conference USA. The Georgia Tech transfer would have potential if he was 19, for he’s an athletic 6’10 small forward with fledgling ball handling and shooting skills. But aged 25 with little to show for five years of college play, it’s not going to happen. He’s only three months younger than Darko Milicic, for God’s sake. And Darko’s been done for five years. Shan Foster Foster is a former Mavericks draft pick and shooting specialist who hasn’t added to his game outside of the shooting. He was drafted out of Vanderbilt in 2007 after shooting 47% from three point range in his senior season; however, since that time, he has been pretty ordinary. In Turkey last year, Foster averaged 9.1 points, 2.9 rebounds and 1.6 assists in 26 minutes per game for Kepelz Bld Antalya. He shot 39% from three point range, but if it weren’t for his draft spot, we wouldn’t be talking about him. J.R. Giddens Giddens started last year with the Celtics, and with the news that he wasn’t having the third year option on his rookie contract exercised. This made him only the 7th player all time to […]
