I used to think I had a pretty good grip on bird rights, but our ability to renounce and still re-sign JJ Hickson last summer really confused me. If we decide not to tender a Qualifying offer to Eric Maynor, do we retain his bird rights but lose his restricted status? How does the cap hold from Hickson work this summer? Do we have to renounce Hickson to get his cap hold off our salary cap?
The reason we were able to renounce Hickson and resign him fall under an wierd part of the rule renouncing rules. If you renounce the rights to a player to sign a restricted free agent you get the renounced players rights back if you do not aquire said player. Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2
That's very strange.... so we were able to reacquire Hickson's rights because we failed to sign Hibbert? But that doesn't make sense because we never actually tendered an offer to Hibbert.
So this is the same scenario with Maynor? What if Hickson would have received an offer from someone else before we knew if we could have landed Hibbert?
In the case of Hickson, we just signed him as a free agent. He was not "renounced". We didn't have any HOLD of any kind on him. He didn't get any better offers, so decided to return with us for 1/yr $4M. If the QO is offered (not necessarily signed or accepted) the team holds RFA rights to match contract. If QO is offered a cap hold is on the teams books until a contract is signed. This is my understanding.
See, but that doesn't make sense because we did have a hold on Hickson and we renounced it. He was an RFA and we had his bird rights, we did not send him a QO, so we lost his RFA status but somehow retained his bird rights (which we still have). What I don't understand is how a UFA has a cap hold, but you can renounce it and still hold onto the bird rights to go over the salary cap to re-sign them.
No, I understand that he had his bird rights transferred through the waiver process, but I thought we renounced them by not tendering him a QO. How can you renounce your RFA status over a player, yet keep his bird rights, all while taking his cap hold off your salary cap?
I don't think a waived player has the "QO" exception though. This is why it's an Early Bird Exemption.
We have Hickson's full bird rights though. Not "early bird rights". I'm pretty sure "early bird rights" only apply to second rounders and guys who have played for you for 2 years. Didn't Hickson's RFA status transfer with him when we picked him up off waivers?
http://www.oregonlive.com/blazers/i...zers_will_not_extend_qualifying_offer_to.html So how did we waive our restricted status over JJ while still keeping his bird rights? This is what confuses me.
If we had his "full bird rights" we could have traded him and his bird rights would transfer over. I seem to remember Brian or RR7 explaining this and using early bird rights as a reference. But trust me, I am not even close to knowledgeable about this shit. I just remember things easy.
What makes you think we kept his Bird rights? I'd have to go back and study the particulars, but it's possible we didn't need his Bird rights to resign Hickson to that 1 yr $4 mil contract. After Hibbert rejected us, and we resigned Batum, we may have been far enough under the cap to offer Hickson $4 million. Or, if we were over the cap, we could have used part of the MLE on Hickson. Again, I don't remember the particulars at that level of detail, just tossing out ways we could have resigned Hickson in spite of not having his Bird rights. BNM
If we didn't have his bird rights, we wouldn't currently have his bird rights (which we do). I'm pretty sure we went over the cap to sign him.
Folks, JJ's agent appealed and was awarded Bird rights. That was an unusual one-off situation. http://www.oregonlive.com/blazers/i...s_ruling_on_bird_rights_gives_blazers_mo.html
I think the NBA appealed that ruling and then the Player Association settled with them and JJ was only given Early Bid Rights (Not 100% on this so if anyone can find a link...). At either rate it doesn't answer how we signed him this off-season while going over the cap (according to most) after we supposedly renounced him earlier in the summer. Edit: I think we did have cap space. We had something like 2.2 MIL in cap space available before taking on Maynor.
Last summer, JJ coming in via waivers to us, then ruling gave him Restricted rights by Blazers for him. We COULD have offered him QO and been able to match salary offers. We didn't offer him QO. There was no cap hold. We signed him using cap space. Now, this summer, we are in the same situation again, we have the right to offer him QO (but won't because cap hold is too high) and match any offers for him. I doubt we will.
