Originally Posted by
Mythrol
With all the talk of players potentially being bought out and released, I thought it would be interesting to see if we could even sign one of those players without making a trade first. Keep in mind we have 15 guaranteed contracts on the books right now so we would have to cut one of them, pay their salary, and then take another cap hit for signing the new player.
I'll try and limit it to basically the hard cap and luxury tax stuff since that's the most pressing issue for us. Sorry if this is a little wordy, I'm going to try to explain it as clear as I can but it had my head spinning as well. Also sorry if I mix something up, I'm just trying my best and certainly not getting paid for this. Correct me if I get something wrong below and I will edit this post accordingly.
First I think it's important to understand why this team is hardcapped. Because we used the Non-Taxpayer Mid Level Exception to sign Rondo, Miller, and Jackson we hardcapped ourselves from being able to go over the Apron this season.
Don't get confused about what the apron is and how it works, etc. What's relevant to the Pelicans is this: For the 2017/2018 season the maximum salary we can have on the books at any time is 125,266,000.
The hardcap is calculated differently than the luxury tax to help prevent loopholes for teams to be able to go over the apron. Again, not necessarily important the exact details about how and why, but what is relevant to the Pelicans: All incentives whether likely or unlikely count against the hard cap.
The Pelicans currently have 15 guaranteed contracts that all count against the cap. We also have Josh Smith signed on using the hardship exception to a non guaranteed contract. Every game he plays will cost the Pelicans roughly 12,000 against the hardcap/luxury tax.
I tried my best to find out exactly what the Pelicans hardcap salary is at right now. I've based it on the different NBA salary websites but this information is easy to get wrong and will probably require double checking. Basically, I'll try to get us close but not hold me to it 100%. Note: Veterans on minimum deals make more money than their salary cap hit, this is a way for the NBA to give incentive to teams to sign veterans to reasonable deals while still allowing them to get paid a little more.
The Pelicans hardcap salary is as follows:
Ajinca - 4,961,798
Allen - 1,471,382
Asik - 11,595,505
Clark - 1,471,382
Cook - 25,000 guaranteed
Cousins - 18,063,850
Crawford - 250,000 guaranteed
Cunningham - 2,300,000
Davis - 23,775,506
Diallo - 1,312,611
Hill - 12,236,535
Holiday - 29,470,000
Jackson - 815,615
Miller - 2,100,000
Moore - 8,445,024
Nelson - 1,429,818
Rondo - 3,300,000
Smith - 36,000 (3 games played so far)
Toupane - 25,000 guaranteed
Total : 123,085,026
Assuming my numbers are close, what this means is the Pelicans are ~2,000,000 away from the hard cap that we cannot go over.
The luxury cap is calculated differently from the hardcap. Our number for the luxury tax is roughly 118,280,000. The luxury tax is 119,226,000. This number however, is not calculated until the last day of the season, and is adjusted for whether players hit their likely incentives or not. Hill will not hit his incentive this year due to injury which will lower our luxury tax salary by 489,000. Jrue is currently on pace to miss one of his likely incentives as well, which would lower our luxury cap hit by another 275,000.
Why is this important? Because it means *potentially* we could cut one of our guaranteed contracts and sign a veteran to a minimum deal costing roughly 1,471,000 and we would still be under the hardcap and the luxury tax for the end of the season.
TL: DR - The numbers are EXTREMELY close and because we don't have completely accurate numbers it might be off enough to not make it possible. But, it does look at this time like we could add a player that gets released if we wanted to and they were willing to sign a minimum deal. Keep in mind however, this is a one time thing, we would get no do overs if the player gets injured. We wouldn't have the space.
I don't know if others thought this was interesting but since we've talked about the possibility of adding a player that gets released from another team I thought I'd see if it was even possible without making a trade. Most importantly, I'm doing this so in a few months when I forget all this information again, I can just check this thread instead of having to research everything over again.