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How Much Money Can the Wolves Spend this Off-Season?

To know how much money the Timberwolves will have to sign free agents, we need to look at their cap number compared to the projected salary cap. The cap number includes players signed to contracts, free agents cap holds, and various salary exceptions.

The Wolves are a little bit below the salary cap line with only their guaranteed contracts, and their cap holds put them well above the line. This presents an interesting dilemma: should they stay above the cap or should they try to free up cap space to sign players? If they stay above the cap they can use their bird rights to resign Hummel, Hamilton, and/or Garnett, and they can use free agent salary exceptions and trade exceptions to add other players. If they go below the cap they have to renounce all of their bird rights and exceptions and will (almost) only have cap space to work with.

The meat of this article is the chart below which details the Timberwolves salary situation. The figures that are guaranteed are blue, the figures that the Timberwolves can choose to renounce in order to create cap space are gold.

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BORING DETAILS:

I’ll briefly explain some of the figures in the chart. The details can get pretty complicated and dull so feel free to skip this section. I owe most the following information to the essential CBAFAQ.

6 Budinger has a contract with a player option, but it has been widely rumored that he plans on picking up the option so we’ll treat his salary like it’s guaranteed.

11 The cap hold is based on the salary slot which the NBA sets for each draft pick. Draft picks can be signed (and almost always are signed) for up to 120% of the slotted--$5.7 million for the #1 pick. If the Wolves intend to use cap space they’ll hold off signing their pick until they have made all their other signings first so that extra 20% doesn’t count against the cap number.

12 Lorenzo Brown’s contract is fully non-guaranteed. They may pick it up, but I suspect that they signed him in case his contract may be useful to match salaries in a trade.

13-14. Robbie Hummel and Justin Hamilton are eligible to become restricted free agents. Here are the possible scenarios that could play out for either of them:

A. The Wolves make him the qualifying offer (1 year $1.02 million) and he accepts.

B. The Wolves make him the qualifying offer and he doesn’t accept and becomes a restricted free agent. At this point he can sign an offer sheet with another team and the Timberwolves have the rights to match the offer sheet to keep him.

C. The Wolves sign him to a new contract using their bird rights to keep him from restricted free agency

D. The Wolves renounce him and he becomes an unrestricted free agent. They could choose to sign him later on but they will no longer have bird rights to do so. This is what happened to Robbie Hummel last year.

The players' cap hold (not their qualifying offer) counts against the cap until they are renounced or resigned.

15. Kevin Garnett has a cap hold of $18 million that exists until they renounce him or re-sign him. My guess is that if they don’t renounce him they’ll re-sign him for something like $6 million.

16. This is the non-taxpayer mid-level exception. This exception is only available to teams that are below the "apron," i.e., below the point $4 million above the tax line. Teams above the apron can only use the Taxpayer Mid-Level exception which is only $3.376 million. If a team uses the non-taxpayer midlevel exception they cannot exceed the "apron" at any point during the season—teams faced with this situation are said to be "hard capped"(see the 2014-‘15 Los Angelos Clippers). Players can be signed for up to 4 years with 4.5% raises using the mid-level exception.

Many believe that it will take all of the mid-level exception for the Wolves to sign their prized european, Nemanja Bjelica.

17. The same rules that apply for the non-taxpayer mid-level exception also apply for the biannual exception. Also, the biannual exception cannot be used two years in a row.

18-22. Traded player exceptions are too complicated to explain fully. Here is an attempt at a simple explanation: if a team makes a trade where the incoming salary is less than the salary of a player traded away then a salary exception is created for the difference.

For example, the Timberwolves traded Kevin Love ($15.7 million salary) for Thaddeous Young ($9.4 million) while simultaneously trading Alexey Shved and Luc Richard Mbah Moute ($7.7 million total) for Andrew Wiggins and Anthony Bennett ($10.7 million total). Since Kevin Love makes $6.3 million more than Thaddeus Young, the Wolves got a trade exception of $6.3 million

The Wolves have one year after the Kevin Love-Andrew Wiggins trade to use that traded player exception. They can use it to acquire 1 or more players who make up to $6.3 million, but they cannot combine it with other salaries to acquire a player who makes more than $6.3 million.

*The Projected salary cap and luxury tax line is only a projection. The real amount won’t be known until the July moratorium which takes place a few days after the draft. During the moratorium the NBA projects how much cash the will be rolling in next season and sets the cap accordingly.

USING CAP SPACE?

As it stands now, the Wolves would be best served to keep their exceptions and function like a team that is over the cap. If they renounced their exceptions they would only have about $6.6 million in cap space which is barely more than the $5.4 million they would get just from the mid-level exception. Furthermore, if they want Kevin Garnett to be on the team next year they would have to either use some of the $6.6 million to re-sign him or he would have to take the minimum salary to play next year (perhaps an under-the-table deal can be made).

The only way that renouncing their exceptions and going below the cap makes sense is if they can free up more money by trading away some of their players without getting salary in return. This would be tricky because other teams place a lot of value on cap space (see JaVale McGee trade), but the Wolves do have some sweeteners for such a deal in their two 2nd round draft picks or possibly even the contract rights to Bjelica.

The chart below shows how much cap space the Wolves could create if they were able to trade certain players or combination of players with no salary coming back in return.

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In addition to the cap space, they would also have these exceptions available to sign free agents if they go under the cap.

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The room exception is available for teams that drop below the cap and then go back above it.

The minimum salary exception is always available to everyone and is the means by which teams sign players to minimum contracts. The amount of the contract is dependent on the number of years the player has been in the league. The minimum salary exception will likely be the means that the Wolves use to sign a 2nd round pick if they choose to draft and sign one.

WRAPPING IT UP

The NBA salary cap is complicated. The Timberwolves have minimum flexibility this off-season so don’t expect them to do much beyond re-signing Garnett, signing Bjelica or another mid-level free agent, and signing another bit player or two. If they are interested in making big waves via free agency it will require some very creative (and possibly ill-advised) trades and cap management.