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

Neither is Lebron. It's wishful thinking to think they'd do so, even if it costs the team the ability to keep Randle. That's not their concern.

 

if the pipe dream doesn't come true, i'd consider offering cousins big money for two years, partial guarantee on the second. i'm sure he doesn't want that, but at that point, you're only jeopardizing 2019 space, and really, if we strike out this year, there's not good reason to believe we'd do better in 2019. the key is keeping the length of the commitment down. that was the only mistake with mozdeng, imo. i was ok with paying them big money, just not for four years.

i don't think anyone will offer cousins a 4-year max this year, so you sell him on getting paid while he recovers, coming to la (where he's been rumored to have wanted to play), and the opportunity for a big payday via early bird rights (150% of his salary, right?) in the event he recovers and plays well in 2019-2020.

 

It does include all non-guaranteed money including Ennis, TB & Zu and Jules 12.4M cap hold.

It does not factor in the #25 pick or the a incomplete roster charge for 1 spot (with PG and Boogie our roster will sit at 11). So roughly that's around 2M... But these marginal amounts really don't take away the fact that we will have roughly 60M in practical cap to work with. Rob's too cap savvy to have a couple million deter him from maneuvering accordingly.

 

My concern with that team is where’s the alpha dog leader coming from? You think Boogie is gonna listen to PG?

 

why not? magic? bring mwp on the coaching staff lol

 

The 41M you noted factors in Ball, BI, Kuz, Hart, Zu, TB, Ennis + Randle's cap hold. That's only 8 roster spots. Deng doesn't count because he's waived when stretched. Nor do PG/Boogie because they obviously aren't signed yet. So even if you exclude the #25 pick and that guaranteed contract, you need to subtract 4 roster charges worth of cap space, which equals a loss of 3.3M in cap space entering free agency. So on a 101M cap, that's 56.7M in cap space. If the Lakers keep the #25 pick, then you subtract 3 roster charges and about 1.455M in salary, which is about 4M. So a minor decline to 56M in cap space. Not that far off from 60M but not enough to give PG and Boogie the MAX. IF PG takes the MAX at 30.3M and you add one roster charge worth of cap space back, you'd have about 26.5M left for Boogie. So either you're relying on a discount OR the Lakers have additional maneuvering to do to free up several more million in cap space.

 

First of all, there's ways to circumvent the cap especially if it's a marginal amount of cap like we're describing. You can place them in the players contracts as incentives (that will for sure be met... And in the case of Boogie, health incentives should definitely be put in place) or you even have your 25th pick sign for less to make the cap work (see Okc's Roberson) Its called practical cap for a reason... Which is why none of us can work with nothing else but approximations until the cap is set after the Finals.

Incomplete roster spots are a cap place holder that get replaced when a player is signed and it reflects a new amount once the roster spot is filled.

With Deng, Jules, PG & Boogie along with the rest our team salary, we have 1 incomplete roster spot that can also be the #25 pick. So you're looking at roughly 1M that cuts into our cap (53M in salary with roughly 48M in cap).

Stretch Deng and you have 10 roster spots leaving an incomplete roster charge of 2 so thats roughly 2M that cuts into our available cap (42M in team salary with 59M in cap space).

Ed, you're looking at it with way too much scrutiny. There are ways around certain cap restraints. Which is why they have a cap threshold to begin with. LA would not be working with a hard cap. You're looking at cap place holders as definite when they're really not... And the amounts we're discussing are marginal.

If you want to be technical then fine, LA can provide near maxes to Boogie and PG (pre-incentives).

 

You have to do the cap space math prior to PG/Boogie being signed to estimate the total cap space and that means you have to factor in the roster charges of that empty roster spot that those two would theoretically fill. Obviously since they aren't signed yet. You are doing the math backwards.

Assuming the Lakers pick up all their team options, make the QO to Randle and then renounce everyone else, they'd either have 56M in cap space with the #25 pick or 56.7M without it. This is assuming the cap is 101M.

I'm not overscrutinizing or suggesting the figures are vastly off. I'm merely explaining why the 60M figure is wrong and as an accountant numbers are my thing and the OCD in me kicks in when I see an inaccurate figure being tossed around.

Now if you want to toss around cap-finagling, fine, but I'm not about to start predicting incentives or suggesting paying the #25 pick less than the rookie scale.

 

Team Salary: 39.1M
Cap holds of JR, BLo, KCP, IT, Frye, Wear and AIngram = 100.4M

Team salary is 139.5M
Hard cap is 129M

If the cap math took place prior to free agency, then the Lakers are capped out...I guess we can't sign free agents.

The cap math takes place AFTER...which is why we don't know the real cap and how much teams have to pay in luxury taxes till after the season finishes.

Incomplete roster charge is the cap that is reserved for a team that is going into the regular season with an incomplete roster. If I have 8 players on my roster and an incomplete roster charge of 4 players, then once I sign a free agent, that roster charge reflects the change and now I have an incomplete roster charge of 3. It didn't impede my ability to sign that player. Its almost like you're renouncing the incomplete roster charge to sign a free agent with that available money.

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to say, but we just don't know what the real numbers are just yet. Everything is an approximation, which is why I can safely say, we can give PG and Boogie approximately their max by stretching Deng.

I was never working in finite terms either way...which is why I kept using words like "roughly" and "about". So maybe you misunderstood my numbers in that regard. They were always considered as approximations.

 

Let's just break this down so simply that there is no misunderstanding.

• Ball + BI + Kuz + Hart + Zu + TB + Ennis = 21.14M
  
• Roster Hold on Randle = 12.45M
• Deng being stretched = 7.36M
• Everyone else is renounced. IT. Lopez. KCP. etc.

This in total is 41M for 8 roster spots

So there are 4 empty roster spots entering the draft/free agent period. The team is either charged with (A) 4 roster charges or (B) #25 with 3 roster charges (or #25, #47 with two roster charges, same total). The loss of A is 3.32M in cap space. The loss of B is 3.94M in cap space. The roster charges are only dropped once you fill the spot. These are factored in when determining team salary prior to free agency, not prior to the regular season. That's why it makes no sense to talk about cap space totals after you theoretically sign PG and Boogie. You do it beforehand because you obviously need to know how much cap space you have prior to signing players.

On a salary cap of 101M, they either have 56.7M with Door A or 56.06M with Door B entering free agency.

The Lakers would need over 60M in cap space to sign PG and Cousins to the MAX. As such, more moves beyond stretching Deng are required and you can not at all safely say you can give them their MAX based solely on that one move given the math.

 

First of all, I appreciate you trying to discuss this and actually putting in the time to clarify your position.

Okay, here is how I look at it....Cap holder isn't finite. Its a holder till the real number comes in and replaces it. As a result, the cap holder reflects the change and is recalculated accordingly.

Lets say, with your Door A scenario. that all takes place and 56.7M is split between George and Boogie. That means we have 10 on the roster and 2 to fill. So does that mean we only have 3.32M to fill that roster up. No, of course not...we have exceptions (vet min, room exception, trade exceptions, etc). That's how you go through the cap into the threshold (ie soft cap).

You can essentially use every last cent of the remaining cap on George and Boogie. But that means we're sitting at 10 on the roster and then what about completing the roster and that nuisance that is the incomplete roster charge...well that gets replaced with the exceptions we talked about before. You round out the roster with those exceptions by operating within the cap threshold now.

And let me just clarify again how I see a cap holder....Jules is at 12.4M...that number isn't finite. He can sign for less than that amount. He can sign for more than that amount or he can be renounced and that number comes off the books. Its a holder. It doesn't define your cap space and how you choose to allocate it.

And again, its such a marginal amount that if we're not giving George and Boogie the max, we're giving them damn near close to it.

Per Larry Coon's CBA FAQ:

By definition, under the Door A scenario, we would have 11 on the roster (via subtracting Deng with the stretch, and adding #25 pick, Jules offer sheet, PG and Boogie).

 

"

Larry Coon's explanation of a roster charge is exactly what I am talking about.

The Lakers would only have 8 roster spots filled as mentioned above. 7 under contract + Randle being given an offer sheet. Then that could jump to 9 or 10 dependent on the draft picks and I accounted for that in my post. There are no free agents included in team salary because they were all renounced in this context. As such, dependent on the draft picks, the Lakers will have anywhere between 2 to 4 roster charges - which, as Coon noted, applies during the offseason.

You keep discussing cap space post PG/Boogie. That's simply not correct. You need to do to the math at the onset of free agency as that is where the roster charges factor.

Go to this page that is a site: http://www.spotrac.com/nba/los-angeles-lakers/cap/2018/

Right there, even they account for: Incomplete Roster Charge (4 spots) at a cap hit of 3.328M

Or go to this article on HoopsRumors:
https://www.hoopsrumors.com/2018/03/wild-cards-for-lakers-2018-cap-room-projections.html

2. Unfilled roster spots
One overlooked detail when calculating a team’s cap room is that clubs with fewer than 12 players under contract must account for cap charges for their unfilled roster spots. Placeholder cap hits equal to the rookie minimum salary are used for those open roster spots. The minimum salary for a rookie in 2018/19 will be about $831K.

So if the Lakers were to pare down their offseason roster to four players, waiving or renouncing all their other players and picks, they’d still have to account for eight rookie minimum slots, totaling nearly $7MM. These cap charges aren’t significant individually, but they can add up quickly if there are a lot of them, and they’ll need to be accounted for"

There is also this article from 2017 that broke down salary cap situations
http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...-cap-situation-ahead-of-2017-offseason#slide0

"Empty Roster Charges: Teams will be assessed a $815,615 roster charge for each open spot below 12 players."

Here's another breakdown from 2013 by Grantland:
http://grantland.com/the-triangle/h...e-lebron-carmelo-summer-of-2014-a-pipe-dream/

SCENARIO 1: NOBODY’S RIGHTS ARE RENOUNCED
With the only salaries on the books being Nash’s $9.7 million, Sacre’s $900,000, and the 2014-15 first-round draft pick’s $900,000, the Lakers will have about $50.6 million in cap space, right? Wrong.

Because of these pesky little things called cap holds, the Lakers actually won’t have any salary-cap space at the start of free agency on July 1, 2014. A cap hold, according toLarry Coon’s CBA FAQ, is a placeholder for players the team is expected to sign. Cap holds are added to the books as a percentage of the previous salary of every free agent not renounced, and if a team has fewer than 12 players under contract, an incomplete-roster charge cap hold in the amount of the rookie minimum salary is added for each open roster spot under 12.



Anyhow I could go on and on thanks to Google. The general point is roster charges are factored into cap space at the onset of free agency.

 

Let's say there's an empty roster and each incomplete roster charge is 1M. So that team would have 12M in incomplete roster charges with roughly 89M in cap space. Let's say they sign a max player now...What happens to that incomplete roster charge? Does it stay at 12M or does 1M of it get allocated to the max of the player? As they continue to sign players, does the incomplete roster charge reflect the change? And that's my point. The roster charges get allocated to the free agent once they sign.

But you're right...It wouldn't be their true max, but very close to it. We're talking about a incomplete roster charge for 1-2 spots which means 800K - 1.6M is taken up in cap space. PG/Boogie aint signing a max deal, but you think they make much of a fuss over not getting 800K each?

 

In that context, once they sign a MAX player (let's say 30M to keep the figures clean), then their cap space goes from 89M to 60M. They lose the 30M in cap space but gain that 1M incomplete roster charge back. With each spot that is filled, each roster charge goes away.

In the end, we both agree they are close to 2 max spots.
I think ultimately the best shot at really freeing things up in terms of cap space would be to salary-dump Deng rather than stretch him. If they can find a taker, then we're no longer talking about not having quite enough to MAX out PG/Boogie to instead having enough to MAX out PG/Lebron.

 

Interesting this comes out less than a day after the Spurs leaked it would take a grand slam offer to get Kawhi. Your move San Antonio.

 

Yep Tweety...You did see a deucy KAT...You did, you did.

 

If you're Minny do you trade Kat, Wiggins,Tyus Jones, 1st round pick for Tatum,brown,rozier and horford?

Do you do it if you're Boston? They can always re-sign IT for bench scoring lolz.