The Timberwolves and the Salary Cap

Ok, Let's start with a table. (I'm desperately hoping this works. Tables and charts always foil me).

Chase Budinger is an unrestricted free agent this summer, coming off a four year contract during which he was radically underpaid, (smart Rockets), but also coming off a season in which he only played 23 games because of injury. He has expressed interest in returning to the Wolves, especially if Rick Adelman remains the coach, and we might assume that due to their need for shooters, the Wolves have interest in bringing him back. The question is: at what price? How much will his injury plagued (and poor shooting) season effect his market? I'm not sure it will have a huge impact; teams tend to fall into "best case scenario" thinking when the free agent frenzy begins, though there are always guys left over. At absolute minimum, Budinger is going to get $3M a year for 3-4 years; I could easily see that being $5M or more. Let's assume it will be a $4M cap hit for the Wolves in 2013-14 to keep him.

Even more complicated is Andrei Kirilenko's situation. He can either opt in to his 2013-14 contract for north of $10M, or he can opt out in an attempt to find a longer term deal. He has also expressed a desire to return to the Wolves under Adelman. There is an additional complication with Kirilenko, however, which is that the Wolves do not have his Bird Rights if he opts out (whereas they do hold Budinger's Bird Rights because they transfer in trades). This means they cannot go over the cap to sign him (unless he agrees to play for the mid-level exception). If he chooses to opt out, it's going to be tough for the Wolves to find room to sign him. In part because of:

NIKOLA PEKOVIC. The true gorilla in the room. Pek is a restricted free agent and the Wolves must extend the Qualifying Offer to him by June 30th. Once the signing period begins (around July 8th), he is free to sign an offer sheet with any team, which the Wolves then would have three days to match. The Wolves can also negotiate directly with Pekovic, and sign him when the signing period begins.

Once the Wolves extend the QO (of slightly more than $6M), his cap hold will be slightly over $9M (190% of his previoius salary). If and when he signs an offer sheet, that amount becomes the cap number until the Wolves either match or choose not to match the offer.

All of this will happen after the draft. Assuming the Wolves wind up with the 9th pick, that will be another roughly $2M on the cap once the draft pick is made. For the moment, I'm ignoring the 26th pick, which would add another body and a million dollars to things.

So, where does that leave us? If Kirilenko opts IN, then the Wolves are sitting at around $56M for 13 players, plus Pek's $9M hold and they still haven't signed Budinger. If Kirilenko opts OUT, the Wolves are sitting at roughly $46M (not including Pek's hold), and also have a smaller hold for Budinger. Assuming the cap and tax lines stay roughly where they were this season ($58M and $70M), that's going to make it exceedingly difficult to come up with the room to re-sign AK even at, say, $7M a year.

And that's before Pek's actual salary (probably around $12M) comes on line.

We can see that the Wolves are in a complicated situation regarding the salary cap this summer. Not only in terms of money, but also in terms of roster spots, the maximum number of which is 15. They can relieve some of that pressure by waiving any of their non-guaranteed deals, and/or making a two or three for one trade (Williams, one of the point guards, and a draft pick are the likely suspects). They probably will need to shed some salary if they want to bring back all of Budinger, Kirilenko, and Pekovic.

It is going to take some creativity to retain the core of the roster, never mind adding quality pieces to it. We'll see if Flip Saunders is up to the task.

How do you see it playing out? Oh, and what mistakes did I make?

*Salary information from Storytellers Contracts.

Much information from the incomparable Larry Coon FAQ