Offseason Primer, Part 3: The CBA

The short of the short on signing 2nd round picks is (I agree with what was figured out on TWolvesBlog) that they can be signed using the Minimum Player Salary Exception. The caveat here is that these contracts can only be 2 years in length. In the case of Ryan Gomes (where Boston signed him to a 3 year deal after drafting him) they used a portion of their Mid-Level Exception to sign him. You can see the annual minimums based on years of experience here.

For re-signing free agents, things are different. The rights held by a team on their free agents determine whether they’re allowed to go over the Salary Cap to re-sign them. Bird Rights allow teams to use the Larry Bird Exception to sign their players and Early Bird Rights allow teams to use the Early Bird Exception to sign players (duh, right?).

Larry Bird Exception:

This exception allows teams to exceed the salary cap to re-sign their own free agents, up to the player’s maximum salary. The player must have played for three seasons without being waived or changing teams as a free agent. This means a player can obtain “Bird rights” by playing under three one-year contracts, a single contract of at least three years, or any combination. It also means that when a player is traded, his Bird rights are traded with him, and his new team can use the Bird exception to re-sign him. These contracts can be up to six years in length. A player can receive raises up to 10.5% of the salary in the first season of the contract.

So the Wolves hold Bird Rights (and can use the associated Exception) on Gomes (3 years on the same contract), Telfair (4 years on the same rookie contract), Snyder (4 years on the same rookie contract), and Doleac (4 years on the same contact).

Early Bird Exception:

A player qualifies for this exception after playing two seasons without being waived or changing teams as a free agent. Using this exception, a team may re-sign its own free agent for 175% of his salary the previous season or the average player salary, whichever is greater. Early Bird contracts must be for at least two seasons … and no longer than five seasons. A player can receive raises up to 10.5% of the salary in the first season of the contract using this exception. If the player is a restricted free agent with two years of service and receives an offer sheet from a new team, the player’s prior team may use the Early Bird exception to match the offer sheet.

In this case, Craig Smith is an obvious qualifier. He just finished his second season without being waived or changing teams. Also note that the last sentence applies to him as well.

Chris Richard, however, is a different matter altogether. He was signed to just a 1 year contract (let me take this opportunity to mention that I personally think signing 2nd round picks to 1 year contracts is moronic considering that the 2nd year is usually a team option or non-guaranteed; little or nothing to lose as far as I can see).

Non-bird rights:

They are veteran free agents who are neither Qualifying Veteran Free Agents [ed. Bird rights] nor Early Qualifying Veteran Free Agents [ed. Early Bird rights] , either because they haven’t met the criteria, or because they are Early Bird free agents following the second season of their rookie scale contract and whose team renounced the Early-Bird exception. This exception allows a team to re-sign its own free agent to a salary starting at 120% of the player’s salary in the previous season, 120% of the minimum salary, or the amount needed to tender a qualifying offer (if the player is a restricted free agent—see question number 36), whichever is greater. Raises are limited to 8% of the salary in the first year of the contract, and contracts are limited to five seasons when this exception is used.

This is the one that applies to Chris Richard. He doesn’t have the 2 or 3 seasons required for Bird or Early Bird rights. While it’s unlikely that a team will offer him more than the minimum, they certainly could. If the do, and the offer is more than $853,820 (120% of the minimum for a player with 1-year of experience) the Wolves would have to dip into to Bi-Annual Exception or Mid-Level Exception.

Phew, let me know if that doesn’t answer the question. Or, if it looks like a cop-out with all the quotes :)