Cheap free agent scoring guards/guards to fill up roster spots.

They add up team salary, including all exception, cap holds, etc. if you're over the cap, you get MLE and BAE. MLE and BAE are included in calculating the salaries.

If you are $5M under the Cap, add MLE value of $5.5M and now you're over and qualify for it. You can renounce the MLE and have the $5M of cap space instead.

Bulls had close to $90M in salaries and exceptions, so they could have had MLE. Enough of that $90M was non guaranteed salaries, things like Kirk's cap hold, and the savings of Boozer's contract amnesty, that the Bulls got about $10M under.

Add MLE and BAE to $10M under and still are under. Thus no longer qualifying for MLE. Trade of Randolph and Smith for more cap space got enough to pay Gasol and Mirotic. Room exception was used on Kirk.

That's how it looks from the outside, and is reasonably close. The cap "experts" that post to message boards don't have access to the actual player contracts and rarely get the salary calculations right.

I've recently seen blog posts (blogabull, chicagonow) where they seem to be figuring cap space situation. I know they are incorrect because they are not figuring in things like trade kickers, whether some portion of a contract is guaranteed, performance bonuses, whether some portion of a contract counts against the cap or counts differently, etc. may as well add up a column of random numbers.

 

Interesting read. We are blessed to have Thibs.

http://www.blogabull.com/2008/5/12/508481/reinsdorf-speaks-manages-t

 

I think some of the trolling and baiting has settled down a bit and there have been some good posts late last night and this morning.

I can respect the so called PROFIT guys for what they see, especially when spelled out in a thoughtful, reasoned manner.

I can see the points and they have varying degrees of accuracy IMO.

I am on my phone so I am not composing a doctoral dissertation here.

I agree the Bulls watch the bottom line and I am ok with that as long as they are not intentionally sabotaging rings for profits.

I don't think that is the case.

Look at the white flag White Sox. Reportedly Jerry's Boo-Franchise. They had a darn good team. He didn't see a ring. He punted. IMO he passed on some deals over the years (particularly early post dynasty but much less in recent years) that might have made us better by a degree but no ring likely. The franchise has also been hosed by players who flirted but passed despite big time offers -- see: full boat year. See also: Melo. You can only offer what you can offer. There have been opportunities to get or keep players for more money or lost players for other reasons. We could have kept Asik and he has had a great season and an ok season and yet another team. We could have kept Chandler and he had a couple of years where Chris Paul made him look great. Our future Chris Paul wrecked a motorcycle. Deng? Solid guy. Didn't really suffer for the loss and he didn't catapult his new team. Was keep8ng him key to a ring? 8 guess we will never know.

this year I think the FO sees a window. They dumped $16M to get a couple of terrific players, made a big move on draft night, etc. Still need to shore up the backcourt but having"failed" to ultimately convince Anthony to leave $50M guaranteed money behind have done a spectacular job improving an already strong roster.

So I don't know what that makes me. I care very much who is on the court, bleed for the team, have a Bulls tattoo for crying out loud. Like TBF and not long after Denny I have owned/operated/moderated/administered/managed sports boards, focusing on the Bulls since what...2002 or something? I am a fan. I do enjoy looking at options and possibilties so I guess I am an armchair GM. I also recognize the business and the business is part of reality. A team should not spend like a drunk sailor just to do it. When the window for a ring opens then the spending is justified. On the other hand the team should not put out shoddy product just to save money. I tbink some of that did go on post dynasty for several years. I also recognize that sometimes roster moves for financial reasons can be a good thing. Dumping an albatross contact that is blocking future moves can be the best thing you can do. There is always a cost/benefit analysis with every player and their contract.

 

who, ever, suggested spending like a drunken sailor?

 

That's simply not complete contract information.

Show me on ShamSports where it talks about the bonus Noah got last season.

There are parts that count against the cap differently:

• Signing bonuses are divided among the yearly salaries of a contract.
• Incentive bonuses may or may not count against the cap at all (they have to be met, for example)
• Payouts to international teams to buyout a player's contract do not count against the Cap.
• Trade kickers do not count against the Cap.

Who looks uneducated?

 

Hey Bullsville, I thought by salary cap you meant the actual salary cap line, not the overall rules of the collective bargaining agreement.

My understanding is that the most important thresholds are the salary cap line, the luxury tax line and then the apron line. Once you are over the apron line, things can get quite punitive, which you mention with your Knicks/Nets example. And of course you have the repeater penalties.

Of course teams have to operate under the collective bargaining agreement. The Bulls still choose to be a mid payroll team despite being from a major market and being one of the richest franchises.

I'm not really using this pejoratively against Uncle Jerry. Like I said, he's entitled to run his business as he chooses.

But he clearly seems to operate with the luxury tax line being the target budget line. And its pretty firm. I wasn't one to say that he would NEVER pay the tax, but if you look at the history of Chicago tax payments and you look at the transactions that took place after Deng said no to their contract offer, I think its hard to say that the tax line isn't a line that is followed very closely by the Bulls Org.

And over the years, the teams that have won the rings don't seem as reluctant to become high payroll (tax paying) for a while as the Bulls are.

For the teams that I mentioned in my previous post, those teams are #2, #3, #5, #7, #15 in overall tax payments. Those teams have won almost all of the rings in the tax era.

The Bulls have been #22. And that's not by mistake, its by design.

 

Mike Miller is no Luol Deng.

 

OK. Your an "expert" and I'm a "layman."

Whatever.

 

What the hell are you arguing about?

I don't think teams should spend for spending's sake.

Keeping a Mike Miller on his last legs is not a good thing. Not at a 2 year cost of $40M.

Luol Deng was a 29 year old 2-time all star at the time he was dumped for profit.

I'm sure you see the difference.

 

Wow! Some kind of discussion here.

I'm going to dance around a bit:

- Sham's site gives great salary info. If you hold your mouse over the player's name, the site will provide info on the contract including whether there is a trade kicker and/or incentives. It will also tell you whther or not the incentives are considered likely or unlikely to be achieved. Unlikely incentives are not included in team salaries for cap purposes, but likely incentives are. Likely incentives are included in Sham's salaries...he recently upped Noah's cap hit to reflect that his $500,000 incentive that was considered unlikely has been changed to likely. If a fan becomes familiar with Larry Coon's salary cap FAQ and Sham's site, and understands the info on these sites, he/she has game IMO.

- It's hard not to get personal with some of the discussions, but I hope we will continue to try.

- K4E, while being below the cap has its downsides, it's the only way to unilaterally make an offer to a free agent that exceeds the MLE. If you're over the cap and want to sign a big salary FA, you will have to make a trade which means that you'll have to give up other assets. I know that you know this, but your comment about how being under the cap kinda sucks, seemed to ignore this one important positive.

- The Bulls amnestied Boozer in an effort to improve the team. We then argue whether this is a once-in-a-lifetime exception to Reinsdorf's normal "profit over team" MO or simply one in a consistent pattern of decisions that put the team first. No surprise, I see it as the latter and will always feel like I'm talking to foreigners when discussing this with those who believe the former. I'm sure it gets old for both sides.

- If you really hate Bulls management, I'm not sure how you can view their actions objectively.

Oh, and I hope that the Bulls can get at least one pretty good free agent scoring guard for the vet minimum.