right, but there is a middle ground. 2 year deals for young guys who slip through the cracks, for example. portland did a good job a few years ago when they struck early on young guys with mid-dollar, 2-3 year deals (ed davis and aminu were the guys, i think). our mistake was giving out huge, full-length deals right away to non-stars. you can't move those kinds of misses. even if you miss on a lower dollar or year deal, you can recover. you can also rent space for picks, but tbh, those picks are always pretty low and don't end up moving needles much. thus, i'm in favor of looking for young guys who haven't gotten a pay day and might be left waiting while all the bigger fish get sorted out. we could have signed pre-injury isaiah thomas this way a few years back, but we were dumb. let's stop being dumb.
We do need that Kawhi/KD type guy though because we need a Shaq/prime Wade, Elway/Terrell Davis situation. LBJ is still good enough to be a huge factor but not the overwhelming force he once was at least on the defensive end. We need that mvp candidate who's back we ride on. If we go the 2nd tier route then we better nail it in the role-player department. We haven't exactly been making waves there but I understand last season was always considered a reset the switch season if it didn't work out. If we don't nail it then we need to prepare for AD I don't care if it's 2020 before it happens. That will also create a window beyond what we are narrowly seeing right now with LBJ.
hence the moniker Kupcrap, for the mound of s*** that he built..IT was practically begging to be signed and Mr. Personality thought he can attract a big time free agent and shut the door on Thomas
Thinking Beal might be available this summer; a lot depends on what we do this summer, but if we strike out, I think Washington could deal him. Not a Tier 1 option, but an option, nonetheless, me thinks...
If those options are there, I'd opt for that all day. However, IMO, Butler and Middleton both re-sign with their current teams; our best shot is with Kawhi, IMO. And if Kawhi doesn't sign here, we're left looking for options on the trade market...
low key player but id think he could replicate 80% of Beal......Malik Beasley of Den, hes rfa but Den gota pay Murry soon and they got hella expensive roster already id absolutely give him full mle (8-10mill) and see id Den will match....solid defender, athletic n shooting 40% from 3s, hes everything we wanted from Kcpoop but actually worth the $ (or could be worth it)
Our MLE is the Room MLE which is 4,760,000. Room, as in we have cap "room". The Standard MLE which is $9,246,000 up to four years, with 5% annual raises, is for teams over the cap but below the tax apron
Can you elaborate on this a bit? I’m not quite that cap savvy. But I feel like we used that 9M MLE for Rondo this past summer. So with all our 1 year deals we should be in a similar cap situation this year, right?
We did use our cap space on Rondo. We used our room exception on Lance (4.449mil) Standard mid-level - for over-the-cap teams (109mil+) that don’t go over the tax apron at all (roughly 136.7mil). It can run for up to four years, with 5% annual raises. The tax apron is an amount a little higher than the luxury tax (132mil) and they changed how they calculate it this year but it should be about 136.7mil according to how I read it is now calculated. Taxpayer mid-level exception is for teams over the luxury tax apron, or teams that will want to be able to go over the tax apron later that season. 3 year-max deals with 5% annual raises. Room exception is again for teams with cap room and have used it up (without going over), They can use the Room exception which is up to two years with 5% annual raises.
thats fine but even if we get a kawahi we still have something like 10-11mill in cap space after....i dont know what priorities we need for roster but id feel safe giving that $ to Beasley, especially if we end up trading ingram for AD
Yeah I'm not sure what we will have left over, Kawhi is 32.7 mil thankfully and so is Klay, not 38.15 like a 10 year vet. But I show if we renounce everyone expiring that with dead cap (Deng) and incomplete roster charges we have around a little over 38 mil. Just enough to squeeze in a KD sized-max or have 6 mil left over on a Kawhi-Klay sized max. We also have bird rights on Bullock and Muscala so if we traded for AD and signed Kawhi or Klay we could go over the cap to reup Bullock and/or Muscala. Might come in handy. I know people aren't excited about Muscala but beggars can't be choosers, he can play a bench role.
excellent target. we need to be looking for situations like this across the league. even if no max player comes, we could find three or four beasley types with our cash, and the likely big role and media attention might make it possible to snag them on 3 year deals or less, which will keep them moveable should we need space later. let's find some montrezl harrells and such and lock them up. another lower-dollar candidate of interest: maxi kleber. underrated defender, backup pf/c who showed some signs of being able to knock down a wide open three. dallas has powell ahead of him, whom they're likely to extend. would a two-year deal at MLE make them balk? would 2+team option for 20 million total get it done? these are the kinds of deals that teams have used to poach good young role players. technically, we have the MLE, though, right? it just doesn't matter because we have to renounce it to use space. but yes, we don't get to sign a max guy and THEN use the full MLE. we used MLE money, but not the actual MLE--because we didn't need an exception to the cap as we were under it at the time. anyway, most of the time this stuff doesn't matter, but occasionally--generally when a team controls a lot of player rights in a given summer--it can. for example, last year, we had lopez's cap hold still on our books at a high number (25 maybe?). say that between him and some other guys, the cap holds put you up over the cap line. in such a scenario, if you choose to retain most of your guys, you want to sign them with exceptions and keep your full MLE intact--even though you could have had cap space (and lost the full MLE), you never released the holds, so you retained a larger MLE. i don't *think* the lakers are in that weird position this year, but one could imagine a situation wherein it looks like you have a ton of space, but you instead use exceptions to S&T players (*cough* kcp *cough*) for a big fish (like AD) and never actually opening up the space allows you to keep the full MLE. again, don't think we can do that this year, but any team with a big salary coming off the books always has such options.
This is a bit confused, sometimes you say "exceptions" and you appear to mean "trade exceptions" and other times one of the MLEs. There are 3 types of MLE as posted, we have one, it's the room. All 3 are different amounts. It's the only one for teams under the cap but make no mistake we absolutely need it, when we say we have cap room we mean like a buck or 2 (talking about last season). What you outlined last year did not occur because Lance was paid exactly the Room Exception only (proving that is all we had to offer as far as MLEs go) and we didn't have any trade exceptions. You either have trade exceptions from previous deals or you don't. Also the only trade exception we have now is about 1.5 mil from trading Zu to the Clips. Honestly I'm not sure what you're talking about, renounce our MLE to make space? No idea what that means as MLEs by their nature don't take up space. And yes we could sign a max guy and use our MLE (the room MLE) not the Standard MLE which I believe is what you are referring to as the "full" MLE (which we do not qualify for unless we go over the cap).
^^^LT, maybe I can help haha. Once you use cap space, you renounce all other exceptions other than the room exception. We could have operated as an over the cap team last summer by keep BLo and KCP's capholds on the books in order to use the non-tax payer MLE, but then no Bron haha...unless he pulled a Boogie. So Bron, KCP, Rondo, Lance and our draft 2018 draft picks were all signed using cap space. Lance was signed at nearly exact the amount of the room exception (4.45m) which would imply that we were thinking of using the room exception on him once we exhausted all our salary. But that didn't happen...instead we used the room on Beas...so something didnt go to plan...maybe Boogie choosing the dubs for their MLE (that's my guess). Also McGee committed to us early just like Lance implying that he was also going to be signed with an exception (vet min), after we exhausted our cap. If you consider that Deng was not bought out and stetched till Sept 1st, even his 18m were on our books...so add all of it up and we were at about 101.5m in team salary with a salary cap of 101.9m. We then used the 3.5m of the room exception on Beas (leaving roughy 900k of it to possibly use on an undrafted rookie on a rookie min deal). McGee was then signed to the vet min exception, Deng was stretched and then Ty Chandler was brought in as our 15th man a few weeks into the new season. Anyways, the roll over option is still in play with 9yr vets like Kawhi, Ky, Klay, Kemba, Butler being eligible for the 35%max as 10 year vets next summer. Giving them a 1+1 deal this summer, still gives them power to cash in next summer and if it doesn't work out being Bron's running mate, they vacate that space and essentially open up a near max slot for AD to walk into next summer as a free agent. That should be our play. At least I hope it is.
i am pretty sure what i'm talking about. all teams are armed with exceptions. the MLE is the mid level exception. i think the part you're missing is the significance of cap holds. every player that was on your team the previous year carries a hold (that allows you to use exceptions! like, say, the larry bird exception, which is also an exception--it's exceptional). for example, i think we own early bird rights (though it might be non-bird, not positive) on mike muscala. this means that technically, he's on our cap for like, 9 million right now. if we (god no) chose to sign him, that hold would be replaced by his actual salary (which should be -38 dollars). or we could renounce him and have him count as zero. in which case he's replaced by the incomplete roster charge, which is like 500k-ish. if holds take you to the cap, you have the full MLE available, but when you renounce those holds to use space, you renounce the MLE, as vash indicated above. we had lopez's bird rights (exception) until we signed lebron (which required renouncing those rights or that exception). http://www.cbafaq.com/salarycap.htm#Q25 http://www.cbafaq.com/salarycap.htm#Q26 so in the example given, it's better to operate over the cap than under. we might be able to retain everyone, have kawhi force a chris paul trade, use our full MLE, then trade for davis in december using that player and others, for example. instead of just renouncing all and signing kawhi. the latter is easier, but not necessarily "better".
Just to preface this, this is all is my personal opinion, and it's a really tough discussion! A lot of you have brought up some very thoughtful points here. On one hand, some of our young guys have shown a lot of potential, and are still so early in their careers. It would be foolish to sell low on them and gift other teams great players on cheap deals. On the other hand, LeBron is one of the best players, and is not getting any younger! We want to give him as much ready made talent as we can right now, to win a championship. My hunch is that there's a good balance between developing the young players and giving LeBron more help. Question is, can we find the right guy to help us with that?
I like your business perspective Mr. Rambis. From a basketball viewpoint, I've always been on-board with the development of our young assets (particularly Zo and BI). I think the additional superstar narrative is hyped way too much and played a significant role in Magic's demise (It boxed him in). GS, Milwaukee, Portland, and Toronto (all 4 of the finalists) all are organically developed teams with GS and Toronto adding one all star from the outside. Plus they are entertaining to watch. Frankly, the additional superstars at any cost to come be a savior approach, is what Pissed off the LA fanbase, front office and ruined the TEAM this year. I don't understand what makes folks think that BI, Zo, Kuz, and Hart aren't going to get better. BI was scoring at 25 a clip for a solid month, what makes folks think that he's going to regress when he is only 21 yrs. old. Zo was a top 3 defensive point in the leauge and a transcendent floor general at the age of 21. Kuz and Hart both bring solid contributions to a winning team. DLO and Randle are playing at near all star levels and only going to get better and the team enjoyed each other. I think Jeannie saw this and said Nawww .... lets pump the brakes, we are not the Cleveland LeBrons or the Houston Harden's. It may not be a pretty transition but I think Jeannie has the right idea on team development. That is all ....
