How Shaq And Starbury Helped The Celtics Get Under The Cap

http://espn.go.com/blog/boston/celtics/post/_/id/4719896/how-shaq-and-starbury-helped-cs-get-under-the-cap



How Shaq and Starbury helped C's get under the cap
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Steve Babineau/NBAE/Getty Images

Chris Forsberg, ESPN Staff Writer




LAS VEGAS -- When the Boston Celtics elected to dip below the salary cap last week, it required a bit of bookkeeping that had been largely ignored over the past two decades because, well, there had been no real reason to ever tackle it.

Understanding the NBA's Collective Bargaining Agreement is a headache for even those who are paid to master it. The simple version is this: Each offseason, teams are assigned cap holds -- or placeholder salary -- that accounts for players expected to be re-signed, and teams typically renounce the rights to players that won't return.

Here's the catch: If you're a team like the Celtics that lived above the salary cap for 6,530 consecutive days, there was never a need to remove those holds. They don't count toward your final payroll, only toward the calculations of how much you have available to spend. Being above the cap, the Celtics never had any money to spend beyond that provided by exceptions (i.e., the mid-level, bi-annual, rookie, minimum).

This offseason, the Celtics determined that their best path to building a brighter future was to dip below the cap. In order to do that, the team had to renounce the rights to the many players that lingered on their books since those players never signed another NBA contract after their time in Boston.

So at some point on the afternoon of July 9, 2015, Boston assistant general manager Mike Zarren sent the league office a simple email from Utah (all that procrastination probably paid off as we assume there was probably a lot more paperwork two decades ago) renouncing the team's rights to the following players:

Carlos Arroyo

P.J. Brown

Mark Bryant

Michael Finley

Nenad Krstic

Grant Long

Stephon Marbury

Shaquille O'Neal

Michael Olowokandi

Scott Pollard

Chris Wilcox

That email also included Brandon Bass, but he had already signed with the Los Angeles Lakers by the time Zarren pressed the send button. With that email, Boston cleared the necessary room in order to start processing its offseason additions. The Celtics later formally announced the signings of Amir Johnson and the re-signing of Jonas Jerebko.

The Celtics have more moves to process but are attempting to maximize their remaining available cap room before finalizing deals that will re-sign Jae Crowder and deliver David Lee in a trade from the Golden State Warriors.

Boston has roughly $7 million in cap space to play with (there are moves that could get them as much as $9 million, but not without some headaches). If the Celtics elect to use that space, however, Zarren could have some additional renouncing to do.

You see, three holds remain on the books.

1. Luigi Datome. Boston has a hold for 150 percent of his salary last season, or roughly a total of $2.6 million. By keeping Datome's rights, the Celtics leave open the possibility of re-signing him down the road should they have a need.

2. Roshown McLeod. McLeod, who never actually played for the Celtics, but was acquired in a trade with the Philadelphia 76ers on Aug. 3, 2001, remains on Boston's books with a chunky cap hold of $3.8 million. He's a bit of a legend in the Celtics cap nerd community, and his lore will only grow because he survived the initial Great Renouncement of 2015.

3. Dana Barros. The Celtics had a whole bunch of players who accounted for roughly a $1 million cap hold. Barros, now a community relations consultant for the team, likely survived the initial trim because the Celtics had room to squeeze one of those contracts in and, well, Barros is the player most attached to the team at the moment.

There are some strategic reasons why the Celtics would maintain these cap holds, but it would seem unlikely they'll come into play. It's more likely that, eventually, McLeod and Barros will join the list of legends renounced. But as we've stressed in this space before, Zarren and Boston's creative front office are always trying to think a couple moves ahead so that the Celtics maximize every possible move.



bob
MY NOTE:  And this is why it isn't just "simple arithmetic".


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Dana Barros?  Didn't he used to play in a leopard skin and carry a club?  If a player's retired and obviously not returning, I see no sense of keeping him on hold just because there's no reason to remove him.  The lower their salary level (including holds) is, the greater the motivation might be to get under the cap.

Sam

well Bob,

IF you can get the info on what the holds are for each team, it really is simple math.

it's no different than anything else, knowing the rules is number one and knowing the facts pertaining to those rules is number two.

we have $7M in cap space.

The trade for David Lee ($15.5M), sending back only Wallace ($10.1M) will add $5.4M to our salarys.

Crowder's deal is 5 years/$35M. there is already a "hold" on Crowder as a RFA or around $1.2M on this years books. If Crowder's first year salary is around $6M, then once he signs it adds an additional $4.8M to our salary. I do believe we can go back OVER the cap to sign our own FA's, so Crowder will most likely be the LAST piece to become official with the League, IMO.

so both players will take us back over the cap by about $3M unless those final cap holds are removed.

also those traded player exceptions were GONE once we went under the cap as well. I am surprised like many here that Ainge didn;t try to use the $12M TPE in a sign and trade with Toronto for Amir Johnson. But maybe there were rules issues . For instance Toronto has only about $50M in salarys on the books right now and even adding Amir's $11M has them under the cap still and as such cannot use TPE's.

Maybe Ainge didn't try to use the $12M TPE in a sign and trade with Toronto for Amir Johnson because he would have had to add something like a 2nd round pick to give Toronto a reason to comply. Maybe Toronto wanted more and Ainge took the easier path.

Doing a sign and trade also puts other restraints on a team:

1. It hard caps them at the "Apron"
2. It has to be a 3 year contract
3. They cannot use the Taxpayer Mid-Level exception.

http://www.cbafaq.com/salarycap.htm#Q91

Scroll down to see: 93. Why would teams or players want to do a sign-and-trade?

gyso

I could see why Toronto didn't want to help Boston by participating in a sign and trade. They are division rivals.
Sign and trades do have to be for 3 years but only 1 year has to be guaranteed.
Yes, Ainge might not have tried the sign and trade route.