Originally Posted by
Pelicanidae
If they were forced to move people to get under the hard cap, then sign minimum deals, they'd end up over the hard cap again. The league requires you to have 13 players on your roster.
So, say they have the $128.3m; they've gotta get under salary, so they move/cut/whatever Shaun Livingston; obviously they're not going to move any of their 4 all stars, and getting rid of Bell or Jones wouldn't bring them under the cap: even getting rid of both wouldn't. So now they're at $120m, with 7 players. So they have to sign 6 minimum guys. The average NBA player plays 6 seasons in the league, so imagine they sign 6 guys halfway through their careers; 3 year players. The minimum contract for a 3 year player is $1.08m. 6 of those, that's $6.48m. So they're back up to $126.48. So they're over again, just by signing the minimum amount of guys required to play.
So that means that Livingston wouldn't be enough, that means they'd have to cut Iguodala if they wanted to sign enough players to fill out the required roster, which means they'd have to either cut him ($48m guaranteed money), or they'd have to find someone willing to trade for an injury prone 34 year old with nearly $50m left on their salary, which means they'd have to bring back in enough salary to the point where getting rid of him wouldn't actually open up the required cap, so they'd have to cut him, which the owners wouldn't like.
I think at this point I'm just rambling. God the NBA Cap seems like it's trying to be perplexing.
Correction: Iguodala's contract is only $48m if you count this season. Obviously that wouldn't be in play next season, so it's only $33m. Still a lot of money, but less.