We have plenty of precedent for this in outline, though. Eddy Curry’s remaining contract came out of Glen’s pocket, for the reward of Anthony Randolph, just last year. It’s the same sort of salary transaction, with more leeway about when the deal “expires” in terms of the cap implications.

Say X team has already used its amnesty on someone, and they’ve still got a lunker of a contract on hand. You can offer them your amnesty-ing services in exchange for whatever young talent you want alongside the player: picks, a young player, that kind of thing. They might chip in some share of the money to be paid in future, too.

In a league where the Suns deal away Kurt Thomas and give up multiple firsts for the privilege, and where luxury tax penalties are now even stiffer than the ones that motivated Phoenix to do that? It can happen.

However only players signed during the previous CBA are eligible. For instance Miami could decide to Amnesty Bosh in 2012 and use that cap space on Dwight Howard.

….I trust Coon over Beck. I’m just saying that there might not be full understanding of how the amnesty will be interpreted.

Guess we’re waiting out the final released agreement to know, as fans.

(And then the teams will all be reacting to however that looks by making a thousand moves inside of the first week, all while training camp starts up. I have trouble not cackling like an evil genius when I think of this….)

when you look at Larry Coon’s math on the Lakers current tax bill ($19.9M this year v. $44.68M once the new system is instituted v. $64.85M if/when they’re over 4/5 years)—it might give them pause. Particularly if the team is under-performing.

In any case, in looking at the terms, I am glad that the league’s professed interest in “competitive balance” wasn’t all lip-service.

I personally prefer to think of it as “competitive balance,” partially because (as a Wolves fan and fan of the underdog in general), that seems like an admirable goal, and partially because I don’t have a tremendous amount of sympathy for the restraint on players’ choices (they can still flock to the most “desirable” teams—there just may be a greater financial incentive to go elsewhere). “Control” for it’s own sake seems to impute some nefarious motive to the owners that I don’t (necessarily) think is appropriate.

Trying to look on the bright side and happy to be free of this nonsense.

Salary is 90% so that is doable. the key will be to sign role players to short contracts to maintain flexibility and to not sign aging vets to long contracts.

doesn’t the minimum payroll requirement help the high-payroll teams? That is, if more teams are close to the cap, it reduces the share of total league payroll accounted for by the highest wage teams. This system makes my head hurt.

Just think about what you just wrote about raiding D-League rosters to make 90% of the cap. Sundiata Gaines at $6 mil for a 1 year deal is going to be just as insane as it sounds. Teams that were flirting with the 75% mark generally don’t have any good players worth paying a lot of money to. If they do, they have a superstar rookie during the first 2-3 years of their rookie deal. If not, what 20-30 win team is going to drop 15% of 60mil on D-League talent? Which Maloof brother is going to pay which Reno Bighorn that much money? It’s not happening. That money is going to get locked up in more “sound” investments.

Here’s how it will happen (just how it has always happened): about 5-6 teams each year will plan to have lots of cap space available. These teams will bid for a fairly consistent percentage of non superstar free agents and, for no other reason than they have money available, guys like Nene and Marc Gasol (and, eventually, Kevin Love) will get max money while guys like Kris Humphries and (insert mediocrity of your choice here) will get stupid money just because they happened into free agency in the right year.

Also, how many teams have operated at 90+% of the cap since the 2005 CBA? It’s not like a ton of teams have been operating under 90% of the cap during the last CBA. This clause doesn’t really change a whole lot in practice. It just preserves a system that doesn’t really work all that well in terms of competitive balance. Stupid owners and stupid GMs will still do stupid things and the smart ones will not. All the while there simply aren’t that many excellent players, great owners, and awesome GMs to make the league balanced competitively with 30 franchises. Competitive balance is, was, and always will be a simple matter of supply and demand. I think the only thing this clause does is ensure that guys like David Kahn will fill out their roster with guys like Ryan Gomes…15% more guaranteed than before (i.e. 90% baseline instead of 75%…which hardly anyone operated at anyway). There is nothing in this new CBA that addresses the supply and demand of the type of talent distribution that will ensure competitive balance.

No 31/31 clause? That’s preposterous ;)