If Dwight Howard opts out and becomes a free agent, he could sign a four-year deal with a first-year salary of $18,996,358 elsewhere. (Greg Nelson/SI)

It has been repeated throughout the league for months now: If the Mavericks can find a way to trade Shawn Marion, use the amnesty provision on Brendan Haywood and move all or most of their other players before free agency begins, they will have enough cap space to offer max-level contracts to both Dwight Howard and Deron Williams.

Reality is more complex for everyone involved once you dig into the numbers, which I’ve done with help from several cap gurus and lawyers.

Dirk Nowitzki will earn $20,907,128 next season, per ShamSports and other sources. The salary cap for 2012-13 is expected to stay almost precisely flat at around $58,044,000.

Even assuming the Mavs move Marion and amnesty Haywood between now and July 1, they are still on the hook for guaranteed money to the following players, per ShamSports: Read More…

David Stern said a system that allows players, like Chris Paul, to choose their own destiny after "seven or eight years" of service to the team that drafted them is ethically fair. (Kyle Terada/US PRESSWIRE)

I encourage you to bookmark these David Stern quotes for future use, whether in 2017, when the owners can opt out of the NBA’s new collective bargaining agreement, or over the next few months, when the Dwight Howard trade rumors resurface along with the hand-wringing over stars choosing a new team (via Ken Berger of CBS Sports).

First, here’s Stern on Sunday addressing a question about an NFL-style franchise tag that could (in theory) bind a star player to his team for at least one season:

Stern pointed to a new measure in the CBA that allows a team to extend a star player by paying him 30 percent of the salary cap, as the Bulls recently did to retain reigning MVP Derrick Rose.

“After that, when a player has played a number of years in the league — seven or eight — and says, ‘I don’t want to re-sign in this particular city, I have a different choice,’ it doesn’t concern us at all that he has that option,” Stern said. “This league has embraced free agency … and has for decades. And that’s fine.”

And then later, on the Heat’s move in July 2010 to sign three of the league’s very best free agents:

“I don’t think it’s a slippery slope at all. I think the fact that players are able to move from team to team, having played under their contracts — their rookie extension, whatever it is — and find a team that is managed well enough so they are under the cap and they can acquire more than one player, we think that’s fine. The ultimate for the league will be whether that’s an interesting and fun team, and the Heat are an interesting and fun team.”

The NBA has always sought to give incumbent teams an advantage in re-signing their own free agents, but that advantage drops sharply when a player becomes eligible to enter free agency a second time. The player’s team at that point no longer has the matching rights teams hold when a player hits free agency for the first time, as a restricted free agent upon the expiration of his rookie deal. In unrestricted free agency, an incumbent team can count only on two things: Read More…

Folks are obsessed with the amnesty provision, which is coming into focus now as the players’ union and league work around the clock to finalize the collective bargaining agreement. I’d put the over/under on teams using amnesty ahead of this season at 3.5, and now that the Trail Blazers have indicated that they will not use it on Brandon Roy, I may well take the under.

Still, the provision will stay alive for the full length of the new collective bargaining agreement. Teams can use it only once, and only for “contracts in place at the inception of the CBA,” according to a summary of the draft agreement.

The idea is simple — cut a player with pay so his salary doesn’t count against the cap or luxury tax — but as I wrote last week, the details are complicated and carry several crucial questions. The two sides have now reached a broad agreement on some of the thorniest questions, according to a source close to the talks. Some bullet points:

• Teams will not be able to use the amnesty provision on a player acquired in a trade going forward. The CBA summary says teams can apply amnesty to a pre-existing contract. It does not say whether teams must already have that contract on their books, or whether that contract must simply exist. There had been hope, for instance, that the Nets could acquire Hedo Turkoglu’s contract in a theoretical Dwight Howard trade and then use the amnesty provision on Turkoglu instead of the less-expensive Travis Outlaw. Turkoglu’s contract is “in place,” in some sense, after all.

Read More…

The Heat will lose sharpshooter Mike Miller for eight weeks because of hernia surgery. (Kamil Krzaczynski/Icon SMI)

On a day of rumors about possible future trades, one semi-important news item got lost: Miami shooting guard Mike Miller underwent hernia surgery recently and will be out at least a month, and possibly two. The Heat, in need of outside shooting and uniquely structured to use Miller’s positional versatility, now have an even thornier decision to make on whether to use the new amnesty rule on him.

As Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com noted earlier this week, the amnesty decision on Miller was going to be tough before news of Miller’s surgery. The difficulty surrounds a clause in the new proposed collective bargaining agreement prohibiting any team that uses the full mid-level exception from exceeding the luxury-tax line by more than $4 million. As Windhorst notes, the league has basically created a hard cap for teams that want to use the full mid-level, which allows clubs over the salary cap to offer a free agent a starting salary of $5 million over four-year contract.

Here’s how this works in Miami’s case:

• The Heat’s payroll, once they sign rookie Norris Cole, will be somewhere between $66 million and $67 million, placing them well over the salary cap.

• The luxury-tax line for the 2011-12 season will be right around $70.3 million, where it fell last season.

• The Heat, with nearly $50 million (which will rise fast in future years) committed to three star players, will lean heavily on the mid-level exception to attract quality veterans around their star core.

• At $67 million, they are permitted to use the full mid-level, since it would take their payroll to $72 million — just short of that $74.3 million hard cap sitting $4 million above the tax line.

The problem, of course, is that by using the full mid-level on one quality player, the Heat would leave themselves with just $2 million or so to fill at least four roster spots. You could accomplish that (barely) by signing four rookies to minimum-salary deals, but doing so would cost you Mario Chalmers — sort of an important thing, considering the Heat have zero true NBA point guards on their roster right now. You could argue this team, with two of the league’s great pick-and-roll ball-handlers, doesn’t need a point guard, but those stars have to rest occasionally, and even if you stagger their rest so that one is on the court at all times, they need occasional breaks from running things. Read More…

Chris Paul, a potential 2012 free agent, has reportedly asked to be traded to New York. (Derick E. Hingle/US PRESSWIRE)

The NBA was open about its goal of restricting the ability of superstars to move between teams, even if neither side in the lockout negotiations seriously considered the kind of dramatic changes that would accomplish that goal — an NFL-style franchise tag (a non-starter for the union), unlimited maximum salaries for individual players and a true hard salary cap. What resulted instead was a compromise atop a compromise: an adjustment to the old Larry Bird Rights system, which allowed teams to offer their own free agents more money, bigger raises and longer contracts than rival suitors.

Those tweaks matter, and they’ll matter more in 2013-14, when some of the harsher provisions of the new CBA go into effect. The league made Carmelo Anthony-style extend-and-trade deals more awkward mechanically for the teams involved and less lucrative for the star seeking a new home. The league did the same with sign-and-trade transactions, and it generally increased the gap between what incumbent teams can offer free agents and what the other 29 teams can offer. The general goal is to force star players into a choice: Stay with your own team or forfeit some money, possibly something like $10 million over a five-year period. Possibly more.

And yet, Chris Paul’s agent has informed New Orleans that he will not re-sign there, that he will decline his player option at the end of next summer, and that he would like the Hornets in the meantime to trade him to the Knicks, according to Yahoo! Sports. The Knicks do not have valuable trade assets, unless you are high on cap relief (Chauncey Billups’ expiring deal) and a rookie who has not played one NBA game (Iman Shumpert). Even so, if the Hornets feel backed into a corner, they could work an extend-and-trade in which Paul would take a financial haircut. And if Paul is still a Hornet when he enters free agency, the Knicks will not have the money to sign him to a maximum-level contract – either the five-year, $100 million he could receive with New Orleans, or the four-year, $74 million deal he could get from another team with room for a max deal. Read More…

The interpretation of the rules surrounding the new amnesty clause could affect contenders like the Grizzlies and Thunder, who lack viable amnesty candidates. (AP)

Amid reports that teams have made final decisions on things such as the amnesty clause, it’s important to note very few elements of the new CBA, including the particulars of the amnesty clause itself, have been finalized.

Take this question several readers asked after reports that the Nets had prepared an offer for Dwight Howard that would involve taking on Hedo Turkoglu’s contract: Could the Nets use the amnesty clause in that scenario on Turkoglu instead of Travis Outlaw, since Turkoglu makes about $4 million more per season and would thus provide more immediate cap relief via amnesty?

I asked the league, and their answer was swift: No. Here’s the key prong of the amnesty rule in the summary of the CBA reporters have seen (bold is mine):

Each team permitted to waive 1 player prior to any season of the CBA (only for contracts in place at the inception of the CBA) and have 100% of the player’s salary removed from team salary for Cap and Tax purposes.

The key phrase there is “in place.” The NBA told me “in place” meant on a team’s roster right now, so that teams could not use amnesty on a player they acquire via a trade made after the league resumes player movement business on Dec. 9. But union sources insist the two sides have not discussed this scenario in detail, meaning it must be hashed out, along with hundreds of other details, as the two sides scramble to complete the CBA by the end of business on Dec. 8. Perhaps “in place” in regards to amnesty-eligible contracts could simply mean “in existence now,” regardless of which team holds the contract.

This is precisely the interpretation I’d be rooting for if I’m one of the teams — and there a bunch — that have no solid amnesty candidate on hand now. I’m especially rooting for this if I’m the Thunder, Grizzlies and Bulls, three legitimate contenders (yup, I’m including the Grizz under the “contender” umbrella) with no viable amnesty candidate on the roster now. The amnesty rule as the league understands it provides nothing for those teams, aside from long-term insurance should a high-priced player suffer a chronic injury that impacts his ability but does not force retirement.

Read More…

Players settled their antitrust suit against the NBA, paving the way for free agency to begin Dec. 9. (AP)

The NBA and the players who served as plaintiffs in a landmark antitrust case against the league struck a deal late Tuesday night to settle the lawsuit, pending the re-formation of the players’ union and the writing of a new collective bargaining agreement, according to sources close to the talks.

The settlement had been expected since early Saturday, when the players and owners announced a tentative deal to end the lockout and preserve a 66-game season. And Steve Aschburner of NBA.com reported late Tuesday that the players’ legal team had begun distributing the authorization cards players must sign in order to reconstitute the National Basketball Players’ Association as a true union with the power to collectively bargain on behalf of the players. The union dissolved itself a little more than two weeks ago, clearing the way for an antitrust suit in which the players accused the owners of engaging in an illegal group boycott (the lockout) and requested damages equal to triple their lost salary.

That decision took the negotiations from the boardroom to the courtroom, a change that added a few formal hurdles to the process of writing a new collective bargaining deal. Settling the litigation is the first step in that process. The settlement will include the economic nuts and bolts of the new agreement — the revenue split, the cap and tax rules and other similar items the two sides agreed upon before Saturday’s announcement. The two sides Tuesday got the federal judge hearing the case in Minnesota to stay all proceedings until Dec. 9, signaling a settlement was close. Read More…

Dwight Howard (left) and Chris Paul can become free agents after this season. (Alex Brandon/AP)

The NBA owners used the lockout to snag billions of dollars in revenue from the players. But they also used it to engineer “competitive balance,” in part by restricting how star players could move around the league. Stars are the most valuable commodities in basketball, and the NBA wanted to give small- and mid-market teams lucky enough to draft top-10 players a better shot at keeping them.

Almost precisely five months after the start of the lockout, we are experiencing an exact repeat of last season’s Carmelo Anthony trade madness, only with two actual top-10 players threatening to force their team’s hand just as Anthony did with the Nuggets. And the league is ready to pounce.

The Nets, flush with cap space and desperate to keep point guard Deron Williams, are prepared to offer center Brook Lopez and two first-round picks to Orlando for center Dwight Howard, according to ESPN.com’s Marc Stein and Chad Ford. The report says New Jersey is also willing to absorb forward Hedo Turkoglu’s disastrous contract (three years and $34.8 million left) to improve its proposal.

Read More…

If waived by the Trail Blazers, Brandon Roy would have no say in which team acquires him. (AP)

We’ve all been obsessing for months over the new amnesty rule, which will allow each team to cut one player currently under contract and have that player’s salary (which the team must still pay) vanish from its salary-cap number. Teams will be able to use amnesty once over the course of the new collective bargaining agreement.

The rule comes loaded with moral issues: Why should teams that signed or acquired overpaid, non-productive players be rewarded with a get-out-of-jail free card, especially since the new, harsh luxury-tax penalties won’t come into effect until the 2013-14 season, giving teams two years to prepare? And wouldn’t the rule be unfair to teams that have kept their cap sheets clean for this crop of free agents? They might face more competition as rivals shed salary, and players who end up as amnesty cuts might view such teams as unappealing destinations, since such players could sign minimum-level deals with glamorous contenders.

The league has tried to fix that last issue by creating a waiver process for players cut via amnesty, according to the details of the league’s proposal. The net result is that teams under the cap will have the first shot at any amnesty victims, preventing those players from flocking to contenders over the cap (the Lakers, Mavericks, Celtics, Spurs, Magic, Bulls and even the Grizzlies). Here’s a slightly simplified version of how it will work:

• Say the Trail Blazers use their amnesty provision on Brandon Roy, who is set to make $15 million this season and $69 million over the four years left on his contract. Releasing Roy would not take the Blazers under the cap — a reason they might wait — but it would take them under the dollar-for-dollar luxury-tax line. Read More…

Borderline playoffs teams, like the Rockets, who have to face an elite team like the Heat on the road will be at a disadvantage. (Steve Mitchell-US PRESSWIRE)

As expected, fans concerned with quality of play and teams getting ”normal” amounts of rest through the course of the season have lost out to maximizing revenue: The NBA will play a compressed 66-game schedule running from Christmas through April 28, and the compression will be such that the league may be forced to use back-to-backs in the second round of the playoffs.

Two other consequences jump out from the NBA’s schedule parameters, first reported Sunday by Howard Beck of The New York Times:

• Each team will play at least one and as many as three sets of back-to-back-to-back games — a grotesque emergency schedule quirk last unveiled during the lockout-shortened 1999 season.

• The league had to trim some games to get from 82 to 66, and travel logistics make it most practical to cut games between Eastern and Western Conference teams. Each team normally plays all 15 teams from the opposite conference twice per season — one at home, once on the road. But this season, teams will play only three of those 15 teams twice. They’ll play six others once at home and the remaining six on the road.

The most common question arising from all of this is: Which teams benefit or get hurt the most from a compressed schedule? That’s a thorny question, involving unknowns and small sample sizes, and I’ll address it in greater detail later this week. For now, let’s just say anyone giving you definitive answers is guessing.

The compressed schedule creates a few other issues we can address more quickly: Read More…