Questions and Answers.

[Superjudge]

Usually it's UFA's. With RFA's, the player would need to be a malcontent who would sulk his way out of town if not traded. Rare is the player who does that and is also a player you would want to acquire.

I'd take Wiggans if he sulked his way out of his current situation to come to Toronto.

Thats a special case, a matter of national security!!!!

[Bonus Jonas]

Usually it's UFA's. With RFA's, the player would need to be a malcontent who would sulk his way out of town if not traded. Rare is the player who does that and is also a player you would want to acquire.

Makes sense, thanks.

[DanH]

Makes sense, smart rule by the NBA.

So our best chance to sign an RFA that wants to play for us is to convince him to take the QO or offer a near max 2 year deal.


I've heard of players forcing their team into sign and trading them, is that mainly UFA's or RFA's and how does the player do that?

Is it when a UFA wants the max so he approaches his current team and tells them he wants to get traded to a specific team after signing his max so that he gets his money but the current team doesn't lose him without getting anything in return?

Usually it's UFA's. With RFA's, the player would need to be a malcontent who would sulk his way out of town if not traded. Rare is the player who does that and is also a player you would want to acquire.

[Bonus Jonas]

Can't offer 1 year deals to RFA's. Minimum two years (options don't count either, so any option would have to be additional years). For guys a team wants to sign to a max deal, the minimum becomes three years (by extending a special max QO).

Makes sense, smart rule by the NBA.

So our best chance to sign an RFA that wants to play for us is to convince him to take the QO or offer a near max 2 year deal.


I've heard of players forcing their team into sign and trading them, is that mainly UFA's or RFA's and how does the player do that?

Is it when a UFA wants the max so he approaches his current team and tells them he wants to get traded to a specific team after signing his max so that he gets his money but the current team doesn't lose him without getting anything in return?

[DanH]

So couldn't we offer Wiggins a huge 1 year deal(his max) when he becomes an RFA, and assuming he would wanna play for us, he can sign without being worried about the risk of signing a QO?

Can't offer 1 year deals to RFA's. Minimum two years (options don't count either, so any option would have to be additional years). For guys a team wants to sign to a max deal, the minimum becomes three years (by extending a special max QO).

[Bonus Jonas]

Everything is identical, including number of years.

So couldn't we offer Wiggins a huge 1 year deal(his max) when he becomes an RFA, and assuming he would wanna play for us, he can sign without being worried about the risk of signing a QO?

[DanH]

If we were to offer an RFA a two year deal and he signed, would the matching team be able to do anything to increase years or would they have to match for 2?

Also do the contracts have to be identical (bonuses, options, clauses)?

Everything is identical, including number of years.

[Bonus Jonas]

If we were to offer an RFA a two year deal and he signed, would the matching team be able to do anything to increase years or would they have to match for 2?

Also do the contracts have to be identical (bonuses, options, clauses)?

[DanH]

Thanks DanH, I was hoping you'd be the one to answer.

One more though, how did Brooklyn end up something like 40 million over the cap in 2013? That doesn't seem feasible on just the Garnett and Pierce trade and a couple other little things...

They were the last ones to be able to use the Keith Bogans loophole, as I call it. Used to be, any player you still held rights to, you could sign-and-trade them. Nowadays they have to have played for you the previous season. Anyway, this lets a team that is already way over the cap create artificial salary to send out in a trade. So incoming salary is 125% of the outgoing - but a big chunk of the outgoing is new sign-and-traded players, so your salary increases dramatically. Combine that with them giving Lopez his max when he came off his rookie deal, and you've got a gigantic payroll.

[KeonClark]

There are several ways to increase salary, but two big ones. First is trades - with things like trade exceptions, and the ability to bring back 125% of what you send out, if you are sending out enough, you can increase your cap very quickly.

Second, and probably more applicable to the Raptors, is raises for current players. For example, if we spend up to the cap this summer by re-signing our own free agents, and use the MLE, we could be about 5-10M clear of the tax. The following summer, we are due to give raises to Ross and JV (and Vasquez and JJ if we want to keep them). Just JV, for example, will probably get a raise from his current <4M to 12M+. Do that for a few guys and you hit the tax quick. Now, the summer after next is actually a different case, since the cap will explode and the tax level will be very high. So we'll probably still be clear of the tax. But that is how you increase salary to that proportion.

Thanks DanH, I was hoping you'd be the one to answer.

One more though, how did Brooklyn end up something like 40 million over the cap in 2013? That doesn't seem feasible on just the Garnett and Pierce trade and a couple other little things...

[octothorp]

Basically, Bird Rights. Simply put, if a player has been with a team for a long period of time, they can go into the tax to resign him. And once a team has bird rights on a player, when they trade him the receiving team gets bird rights, (usually). So, Brooklyn trades for Williams when he was on an affordable contract, and the next summer trades for Johnson and then uses bird rights to get way into the tax with Williams. And they still had their mid-level exception which allowed them to get Teletovic, I think.

It's not hard to get into the tax. The problem is keeping a team together in the tax, especially since a lot of the CBA provisions have made it increasingly harder to operate deep in the tax: not only steeper financial penalties, but the barrier of no longer being able to use sign-and-trades to acquire players when a team is in the tax (something big-market teams used to exploit by making small-markets sell their expiring stars for garbage and picks).

[DanH]

At the risk of sounding like an idiot among my fellow hardcore fans, I'm curious of this; how do we go about getting into the luxury tax?

Now, I don't want the team to get into all these penalties and spend blindly ruining the future, but I keep reading how we can't sign anybody if we resign Lou and Amir, or so on. How would it be so impossible when other teams seem to accumulate such talent?

How did Brooklyn get so far into the luxury tax (again, I don't at all want to end up over to that extent) when everybody seems to say you are physically not allowed to sign guys if over the cap? And with trading obviously salaries have to be close in line with one another?

Thanks

There are several ways to increase salary, but two big ones. First is trades - with things like trade exceptions, and the ability to bring back 125% of what you send out, if you are sending out enough, you can increase your cap very quickly.

Second, and probably more applicable to the Raptors, is raises for current players. For example, if we spend up to the cap this summer by re-signing our own free agents, and use the MLE, we could be about 5-10M clear of the tax. The following summer, we are due to give raises to Ross and JV (and Vasquez and JJ if we want to keep them). Just JV, for example, will probably get a raise from his current <4M to 12M+. Do that for a few guys and you hit the tax quick. Now, the summer after next is actually a different case, since the cap will explode and the tax level will be very high. So we'll probably still be clear of the tax. But that is how you increase salary to that proportion.

[KeonClark]

Can I get a salary capologist to explain this to me?

At the risk of sounding like an idiot among my fellow hardcore fans, I'm curious of this; how do we go about getting into the luxury tax?

Now, I don't want the team to get into all these penalties and spend blindly ruining the future, but I keep reading how we can't sign anybody if we resign Lou and Amir, or so on. How would it be so impossible when other teams seem to accumulate such talent?

How did Brooklyn get so far into the luxury tax (again, I don't at all want to end up over to that extent) when everybody seems to say you are physically not allowed to sign guys if over the cap? And with trading obviously salaries have to be close in line with one another?

Thanks

[Bonus Jonas]

Bobby Webster?

Ahh because I found a loophole aha I didn't realize who Bobby was for a second

[Mindlessness]

Bobby?

Bobby Webster?