Without looking, guess which first-round draft pick didn’t get the full 120% of the rookie scale this year
August 4th, 2014
Answer after the jump.
(this is the jump)
The answer is Jusuf Nurkic of the Denver Nuggets. His contract calls for 108% of the scale in year one ($1,562,680), 107% in year two ($1,642,000), and then 120% in years three and four ($1,921,320 and $2,947,300 respecitvely). That adds him to an exclusive and small club of non-120%ers, including Raul Lopez, George Hill, Ian Mahinmi, James Anderson, Sergio Rodriguez, MarShon Brooks, and probably some others. It is believed that Nurkic, a …
The amount of cap room teams have remaining
July 17th, 2014
The bulk of free agency is behind us, maybe, but we’re far from done. There follows a look at how much cap space NBA teams still have outstanding, which, with the exception of the occasions I blatantly do the opposite, will be presented without analysis as to how the situation came about.
All the teams that have cap space, or have had cap space this offseason, are included in the list. That is a total of fifteen teams and half …
“Consideration In Trades And Trade Structure” – a league instruction manual
July 11th, 2014
At the end of the July Moratorium each year, the league sends out a memo containing all of the findings from the audit it conducted during it. That audit is what the moratorium period is for – the moratorium is one long end-of-season book-keep in which it crunches all the numbers related to revenue, BRI, escrow, tax and the like, and makes determinations on both the past and the future. That memo generally filters through to the mainstream media – …
The fourth and probably final part of the Tim Duncan/Zach Randolph contract saga
June 24th, 2014
Further to this, this and most recently this.
In the last update, I explained how Tim Duncan had had his contract modified, but Zach Randolph had not. And yet what I could not explain was why Tim Duncan had had his contract modified, but Zach Randolph had not. Was it because simply no one had noticed, or because of some other technicality I could not otherwise foresee that made the otherwise identical situations different? Couldn’t say.
Can now, …
Tim Duncan did indeed get a pay rise
June 14th, 2014
This post is essentially the conclusion to a post from nearly two years ago, dated July 22nd 2012. That post was itself a follow-up to this post, published three days prior. The two posts combined to document an issue, or was at the time a potential issue, of a mistake in a contract.
Sitting in the crowd at the 2012 Las Vegas Summer League, I was talking to someone about the market value of power forwards today. The …
Max Deal The Way To Go With Irving
May 28th, 2014
(originally published elsewhere)
Cleveland committed their future to Kyrie Irving. They picked him first overall, gave him all the reins, and gave him all the plaudits. And yet now there are reports that they do not want to give him a maximum contract extension.
Whether or not Irving is worth the maximum salary is not really relevant here. The point is loyalty, and, more importantly, the perception of loyalty. It is not automatically disloyal to offer less than the …
The Truth About “Parity” in the NBA
May 8th, 2014
[Originally posted on Hoopsworld, 5th November 2013.]
In February 2010, NBA commissioner David Stern spoke ominously of the league’s forecasted $400 million loss that financial year, as well as hundreds of millions more in losses over the previous few seasons. His words were one of the earliest warnings of an impending lockout, a threat that became a reality 16 months later. Financial inequalities and a broken system supposedly saw 22 out of the 30 NBA franchises losing money, and something …
Why NBA Teams Sign Players They Don’t Want
May 8th, 2014
[Originally posted on Hoopsworld, 29th October 2013.]
The vast majority of players signed for training camp are signed to contracts without any guaranteed compensation on them.
This, certainly, is no surprise, as it has long been known that most players signed for training camp are not expected to make the team. A few players have fairly nominal guaranteed portions – for example, Dee Bost received $50,000 from Portland, Dewayne Dedmon $25,000 from Golden State, and Trent Lockett $35,000 from Sacramento. …
The False Allure Of Multi-Year Contracts
May 8th, 2014
[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, …
The Value of Minimum Contracts In The NBA
May 8th, 2014
[Originally posted on Hoopsworld, 7th October 2013.]
The most fun part of preseason is being able to get wildly carried away with the results and performances in the mostly meaningless games. This is particularly true of the performances of individual players who simply were not expected to shine, but did.
Two such players have already shown their faces, in Houston’s Omri Casspi and the L.A. Lakers’s Xavier Henry. Casspi shot 9-10 for 20 points on his debut, whilst Henry topped …
How do you solve a problem like Taj Gibson? A follow-up.
February 9th, 2014
Despite it running in the initial instance with a rather significant error in it – I spent a lot of time breaking down how the Bulls had arrived at, and would extricate themselves from, a luxury tax position that they weren’t actually at – the previous post entitled How Do You Solve A Problem Like Taj Gibson? received a remarkably hearty welcome. So, thank you for that.
However, as is always the way with pieces that deal with salary minutiae …
2013/14 Luxury Tax Payers, as it stands at 11.52am GMT on 13th January 2014
January 13th, 2014
(click here for the Instant Gratification Version)
Determining a team’s luxury tax number is not quite as simple as looking at their payroll and comparing it to the luxury tax threshold. This is about 98% of the job, of course, but there are a couple of other tweaks. For salary minutia fans like myself, these tweaks are important. The following list of adjustments is quoted from Larry Coon’s CBA FAQ, a page from which my entire career is …
The amount of cap room teams actually have, updated
July 25th, 2013
The previous post attempted to explain how much cap room all NBA teams would (or wouldn’t) actually have in this upcoming free agency period. It was a bit presumptuous. It had to be.
Now, we can be reflective. Here’s what’s left.
All salary information is taken from this website’s own salary pages. All figures taken from the day of publication – if subsequent trades/signings are made, then adjust accordingly.
No trades are assumed to be taking place here. Guesswork …
It’s official – Keith Bogans will earn $5,058,198 next year. All guaranteed. Keith Bogans.
July 15th, 2013
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| Happy? You should be. |
Keith Bogans has an uncanny knack for being in the right place at the right time. He has become throughout his NBA career the archetypal three-and-D wing role player, the kind of piece you want around star point guards or big men (or both), who’ll defend opposing stars for a few pesky minutes a night and not risk anything more offensively than taking some open threes. Yet despite not being significantly above average at either, and …
Did Milwaukee pick up Gustavo Ayon’s option? Yes. Will they have to do so again in a week? Also yes.
July 15th, 2013
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| Gustavo Ayon, thinking of victims |
A month ago, it was widely reported via all media outlets (though seemingly originating from Mexico) that the Bucks had picked up Gustavo Ayon’s team option for next season.
This week, the story’s doing the rounds that the Bucks need to pick up his option. This, on the surface, rather counters the former.
In reality, both are right. The confusion stems from the terminology used. Only one is actually an option – the other …
Omer Asik and Jeremy Lin’s contract situations
July 8th, 2013
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 …
There IS a difference between “team option” and “unguaranteed”, and it DOES matter
July 3rd, 2013
Several years ago, I wrote a piece called Creative Financing in the NBA, that sought to address and highlight a few quirky salaries and salaries mechanisms handed about that season.
In that piece, I also spent a long time addressing the difference between team options and unguaranteed salaries. Often times, unguaranteed salaries are reported in the mainstream press as being team options, even though the two mechanisms are different. And often times, this is fine, because the differences don’t …
Anthony Tolliver earned $273,697 and counting for one day of work, and it’s all thanks to Sasha Pavlovic
June 11th, 2013
After going undrafted out of Creighton in 2007, Anthony Tolliver played in summer league for the Miami Heat, and was granted the honour of being the 16th overall pick in the 2007 Continental Basketball Association draft. These things eventually parlayed themselves into a training camp contract with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Tolliver’s contract with Cleveland was a typical ‘summer’ (read as ‘training camp’) contract. It was a fully unguaranteed rookie minimum salary contract, which, in the 2007/08 season, was …
The amount of cap room teams will actually have
June 8th, 2013
All salary information is taken from this website’s own salary pages. All figures taken from the day of publication – if subsequent trades/signings are made, then adjust accordingly.
NOTE: All cap space amounts are calculated to an estimated salary cap of $58.5 million. This inexact figure is the most recent (and thus accurate) projection released yet, and will suffice for now. When the actual amount is calculated/announced, the sums below will be altered accordingly.
It is vital – VITAL …
