I'll start with Brooklyn. It seems that there are people who don't yet understand the CBA, but are in position to give $30M-40M deals out like Halloween Candy. Except that, d'oh!, now you can't even trade for Dwight Howard.
And I was checking out storyteller's salary site for MIN. It turns out that, as presently constituted, they can't sign Nic for their rumored 4/50 unless the salary cap goes up to 61M or so. It very well could, but we don't know that yet. However, last week they could've either cut Webster and Miller's non-guaranteed salaries and saved another 10M in cap space or traded them to someone who DID need cap room for a good player. They did extend the buyout deadline, though, for both players in the hopes that they could match up enough salary to trade for Pau Gasol--because anytime you can un-hamstring the L*kers from 80M+ in salary and luxury tax payments and make it easier to re-tool around K*be, you have to do it.
Larry Coon @LarryCoon ...and when I said "non-taxpayer MLE," I meant "taxpayer MLE." In other words, Nets will NOT have a hard cap at about $74.3 million. or, maybe they do know what they're doing.
I can just go by what's reported. It was reported very specifically as "non-taxpayer MLE." There's a slight difference.
Mirza Teletovic. I wonder if the new owner of the Nets has a crush on the Euro player and ordered the team to sign him? Anywho, it is now being reported that the Nets are reworking their deal to sign Mirza under the mini-MLE which will pay him far less $$$. It is obvious why they want to do this, so they can avoid the $74mil hard cap for using the full MLE. Then they can still try to trade for Dwight Howard, or failing that, re-sign both Lopez and Humpries for market priced contracts. WTF? What player agrees to a deal, then agrees to WAAAAAY less money? None. If this goes through, without further explanation, there will be the assumption that the Nets Russian owner will be paying Teletovic under the table in Europe (where it is untraceable by the NBA). I know that will be my assumption. Info from Hollinger in Insider.
