2019/20 Players' Transactions: Breaking News , Trades, Free Agents, And Rumors

Translation, "...... and we all know that Paul is heading home next summer to be a Laker".

 

I do NOT feel good about PG13 coming here anymore. This is exactly why I HATED the D-Lo trade. It was premature at best but I guess if we strike out, we'll just re-sign Lopez and KCP and hope they don't turn out like Deng and Mozgov and then let the young core continue to grow (Lonzo, Ingram, Randle, Clarkson, Kuz, Zu).

Like others have said, I'm OK with us not getting anybody and just waiting until the Warriors decline.

 

It won't be possible for OKC , financially speaking

 

Wade won't help against GSW so it's a useless addition .

Lue is stupid enough to start Wade too

 

wade gave up 6 million bucks to play for a year in cleveland? i mean, i guess he's rich and all, but still...

 

we need to root for anthony not opting out. long shot, but that would make them have to make tougher choices.

 

Anyone verify the math for okc potential tax for 18-19 season? How is it so high? Gsw wasn't even projected to be that high and thats with projected klay/steph raises.

 

Teams pay an incremental tax rate based on their team salary as of the
team's last regular season game, and whether the team is a "repeat offender,"
i.e., whether they were also taxpayers in at least three of the four
previous seasons:


*and increasing $.50 for each additional $5 million past $25M

Recall that the NBA cable deal cap leap occurred for the 2016/17 season, which allowed KD to join GS since the luxury tax threshold jumped from $84M to $113M. Curry, Klay and Draymond's contracts are all under-market value with Curry finally getting paid this summer. Klay and Draymond's contract hikes will reflect towards GS's 2019/20 and 2020/21 salary caps respectively. So GS will only be looking at Steph and KD (if he opts out next summer) as true max players past this season, while OKC would hypothetically be looking at Russ, George and Melo as max players since all of them would opt out of the players options/early termination options and sign max deals, with Russ signing a max extension deal. All of OKC's max deals would kick in for the 2018/19 season.

GS and OKC 2015/16 = tax payers
GS and OKC 2016/17 = non-tax payers (thanks to the cable deal)
GS and OKC 2017/18 = tax payers
GS and OKC 2018/19 = both teams projected to be tax payers and will be paying the repeater tax

2018/19 luxury tax threshold projected to be $122M
GS projected salary cap to be $130M so $8M above the luxury tax threshold
= (2.5 * 5M) + (2.75 * 3M)
= 12.5M + 8.25M
= $20.75M

According to Bobby Marks, OKC projected salary cap to be $157M so $35M above the luxury tax threshold
= (2.5 * 5M) + (2.75 * 5M) + (3.5 * 5M) + (4.25 * 5M) + (4.75 * 5M) + (5.25 * 5M) + (5.75 * 5M)
= 12.5M + 13.75M + 17.5M + 21.25M + 23.75M + 26.25M + 28.75M
= $143.75M



And if the Harden trade has told us anything, OKC can't sustain 3 max players as a small market team. So enjoy the season Thunder fans...it won't last.

P.s. Apologies if I messed up any info or calculations within this post.

 

nice one vash....appreciate it n to say players can take less to help okc, why would they? Taking less doesnt get OKC to sign more better player, just reduces tax $, as a player why would you care bout ownership n their tax bill....russ might take less but not pg n we know melo loves his $

 

Birds rights just means you can go above the hard cap to resign your guy, i.e. if okc cap was 90 mill n hard cap is at 105, okc cant sign non birds fa to go over 105 but they can with russ

 

Nobody is sayimg okc cant resign them all, the question is can a small market tean afrord to pay 140mill+ in luxury tax, i know these owners are filthy rich but end of the day its a business no business owner wants to lose $ on their business, okc has already reported loses last 2 yrs i think with a much smaller tax but than this potential 140 tax. I mean look at this lakers team, made bout 100mill but 80% of that is from twc deal, i dont see okc getting a big time tv deal any time soon

 

Chief, OKC has Russ's bird rights cause he's been with the team for longer than 3 years without any movement. He's eligible for a $207M 5-year extension that he must sign by Oct. 16th (barring they don't negotiate an extension to the deadline contract extension...wait, what? haha). If he fails to, then that OKC offer is off the table and most likely will be offered as a non-extension, but rather a resigning of Russ as a unrestricted free agent once he uses his player option to opt out of his 2018/19 last year on his current contract. The risk obviously is that if he doesn't sign his max extension on the 16th and god forbid, suffers a significant injury during this coming season, then OKC can simply offer less than the max to resign him if he opts out of his player option worth $30.5M. But then again, if he does suffer that type of injury, maybe he opts in instead. But the gist is, he's risking losing a max contract if he bypasses his extension on the 16th and assumes that OKC will offer that same amount at the end of the year.

In terms of Melo and George, they both were traded for and didn't walk on as free agents to OKC, so OKC in trading for them, inherited their bird rights from NYC and Indy respectively (since they were with each team for 3 or more years). So if Melo uses his early termination option to opt out of his 27.9M for the 2018/19 season, then he can demand a max deal from OKC since they have his bird rights. If George too decides to opt out of his player option in the amount of 20.7M for the 2018/19 season, then he too can demand a max contract since OKC also has his bird rights.

In terms of the 2018/19 season, the salary cap is projected to be $102M and the luxury tax threshold is projected to be $122M. So for example if OKC only had Russ and the remainder of the team sans the players that Melo and George were traded for (Kanter, McDermott, Oladipo, Sabonis) then OKC would be looking at a team salary of about $88M. So that means they would have $14M ( = 102M - 88M) to spend on free agents. So in that case if Melo or George remained with NYC and Indy respectively, but then opted out of their final years for the 2018/19 season, then they would be unrestricted free agents and can join any team they like (that has cap room) without that team inheriting their bird rights. Being without bird rights, OKC cannot bypass the $102M salary cap to sign them, cause they only have $14M to spend for the both of them. Max deals for each are in the ball park of $30M, so its impossible for OKC to pay them. However by trading for them, they inherited their bird rights and now they have the ability to bypass the $102M salary cap to give both of them their max deals (each getting about $30M in their first season so roughly $60M for the both of them). So then you take the $88M that includes Russ and the rest of the OKC team and you add $60M worth of salary that accounts for George and Melo and you're looking at a team salary of $148M. Take into consideration a re-calibrated year 1 amount for Russ's extension, the tax payer exception of 5.2M and draft pick cap holds and you're looking at about $157M, which is the amount Bobby Marks estimated in his tweet. Once you pass $122M, you are in luxury tax territory so OKC overshot the threshold by roughly $35M and since they are a repeat tax offender, they will have the higher tax increment penalty to pay.

One last possibility is if all 3 guys take a pay cut, but how massive? All 3 have opt out clauses for the 2018/19 season, so lets say they all do that (and of course under this hypothetical, Russ obviously didn't accept his extension and essentially sacrificed his own bird rights)...that would now put OKC's team salary at about $57.5M ( = 88M team salary - Russ's 30.5M player option). So OKC would have $44.5M ( = 102M salary cap - 57.5M) to spend on their free agents. They would have to divvy $44.5M three ways for Russ, Melo and George (roughly $15M for each player). That's a massive paycut that I'm sure a NY guy and 2 LA guys won't give a 2nd look at, since only one has loyalty for OKC and they can all get much more on another team (with 2 of them teaming up, on lets say our Lakers ).

So like @Khmrp said, no way do these guys do that for OKC. Russ would have to sacrifice a substantial amount to get George and Melo paid, in order for Clay Bennett to avoid a stiff tax bill. Why would he do that and more importantly, why would George and Melo agree to it? Bennett was in this position before with Harden, Russ and KD and instead of keeping them all and paying good money to do do, he had Presti deal Harden away to Houston. Round 2 is next summer and I'm sure Bennett will do anything to avoid getting KO'd by the luxury tax.

Not sure if that was what you were asking for, but if it isn't then I hope it explains it for those that were a bit confused with this, as I was.