Adventures in GM'ing, 2012 Summer

[BrianFromWA]

I'll start with Brooklyn. It seems that there are people who don't yet understand the CBA, but are in position to give $30M-40M deals out like Halloween Candy. Except that, d'oh!, now you can't even trade for Dwight Howard.

The Nets announced the latest in a flurry of offseason moves Tuesday, starting with a midlevel exception deal for Bosnian forward (Mirza Teletovic), moving on to a sign-and-trade deal for the Clippers' Reggie Evans and capping it off with the news that Deron Williams will return, reportedly on a five-year deal worth nearly $100 million. All this is heady stuff for a team that went 22-44 this past season, after already coming to terms with free-agent forward Gerald Wallace and engineering a huge trade for Hawks guard Joe Johnson.

The Nets also are talking about trading for Howard, or re-signing free-agent center Brook Lopez and re-upping power forward Kris Humphries, and by the way, they'd like to use their biannual exception to perhaps bring in Jason Kidd at backup point guard.

But there are rules about this stuff, and the Nets are in the process of colliding with them before they can achieve those final steps. The Teletovic deal is for the non-taxpayers' midlevel exception, which caps the Nets' salaries at $74,307,000 for 2012-13. They cannot go over by one cent at any point.
...
But as things have been reported, the Nets are a few ducats short of pulling off any Howard trade, let alone a good Howard trade that might actually entice Orlando. Brooklyn can't take back any other contracts, not even a Chris Duhon- or Quentin Richardson-sized one. Because recently signed players can't be packaged in a trade for two months, the absolute best Brooklyn can offer is sign-and-trading its three free agents, Brooks and three first-round picks. And I greatly doubt that trumps the other offers that will be coming Orlando's way.

Even that sliver of hope goes out the window the second anybody signs Lopez to an offer sheet, which will preclude the Nets from sign-and-trading him to Orlando.
...
So like I said, I hope Teletovic is good. His numbers from Europe are nice, and it's possible he'll be replacing Humphries at power forward. Oh, and he's making it impossible to get Dwight Howard.

 

[BrianFromWA]

And I was checking out storyteller's salary site for MIN. It turns out that, as presently constituted, they can't sign Nic for their rumored 4/50 unless the salary cap goes up to 61M or so. It very well could, but we don't know that yet. However, last week they could've either cut Webster and Miller's non-guaranteed salaries and saved another 10M in cap space or traded them to someone who DID need cap room for a good player. They did extend the buyout deadline, though, for both players in the hopes that they could match up enough salary to trade for Pau Gasol--because anytime you can un-hamstring the L*kers from 80M+ in salary and luxury tax payments and make it easier to re-tool around K*be, you have to do it.

 

[DaLincolnJones]

Nice work Brian

 

[PapaG]

And I was checking out storyteller's salary site for MIN. It turns out that, as presently constituted, they can't sign Nic for their rumored 4/50 unless the salary cap goes up to 61M or so. It very well could, but we don't know that yet. However, last week they could've either cut Webster and Miller's non-guaranteed salaries and saved another 10M in cap space or traded them to someone who DID need cap room for a good player. They did extend the buyout deadline, though, for both players in the hopes that they could match up enough salary to trade for Pau Gasol--because anytime you can un-hamstring the L*kers from 80M+ in salary and luxury tax payments and make it easier to re-tool around K*be, you have to do it.

The NBA summer would be much less fun without David Kahn to kick around a bit.

 

[RR7]

Larry Coon ‏@LarryCoon
...and when I said "non-taxpayer MLE," I meant "taxpayer MLE." In other words, Nets will NOT have a hard cap at about $74.3 million.

or, maybe they do know what they're doing.

 

[BrianFromWA]

I can just go by what's reported. It was reported very specifically as "non-taxpayer MLE." There's a slight difference.

 

[Masbee]

Mirza Teletovic.

I wonder if the new owner of the Nets has a crush on the Euro player and ordered the team to sign him?

Anywho, it is now being reported that the Nets are reworking their deal to sign Mirza under the mini-MLE which will pay him far less $$$.

It is obvious why they want to do this, so they can avoid the $74mil hard cap for using the full MLE. Then they can still try to trade for Dwight Howard, or failing that, re-sign both Lopez and Humpries for market priced contracts.

WTF?

What player agrees to a deal, then agrees to WAAAAAY less money?

None.

If this goes through, without further explanation, there will be the assumption that the Nets Russian owner will be paying Teletovic under the table in Europe (where it is untraceable by the NBA). I know that will be my assumption.

Info from Hollinger in Insider.