<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">Currently teams that draft a player in the second round but don't sign him to a three-year contract risk losing the player via free agency if they are not under the cap. This happened most recently with the Golden State Warriors when Gilbert Arenas got a huge offer from the Washington Wizards after his second season with the Warriors. Because the Warriors were over the cap, they were unable to match the deal. The new agreement creates an exception for second-round picks. Teams can now match offers to second-round picks as long as the team still owns its mid-level exception. To make this rule work, the new agreement says that any team signing a second rounder to an offer sheet cannot offer more than the mid-level amount in the first year of the contract. However, after the first season of the contract, the player's salary can jump to the maximum allowable for a player with three or more years in the league. So, to keep Arenas as an example, the Wizards would have been forced to offer Arenas $4.9 million in his first year. As long as the Warriors hadn't already spent their mid-level exception, they could have matched the Wizards offer and kept him under contract.</div> Gilbert Arenas gets a rule named after him.
