Some "Salary" Notes after the Ron-Ron departure to Clutch City

I've seen some mention (mostly from posters on StR) that the Kings were paying luxury tax. But according to everything I could find, from ShamSports, or the ESPN trade checker (go to espn nba page and go to more--that's where you'll find the trade checker--linking it does no good), what may see written is that the Kings were over the luxury tax. Hmmm, this was not so in my calculations, but then again let's test this theory out. With and Departed Ron or WR/DR.

W(ith)R(on): Brad Miller: 11,375,000

Kevin Martin: 8,760,335

Kenny Thomas: 8,562,500

Ron Artest: 7,400,000

Shareef Abdur Rahim: 6,200,000

Mikki Moore: 5,784,480

Beno Udrih: 5,585,000

John Salmons: 5,104,000

Shelden Williams: 3,395,760

Spencer Hawes: 2,180,760

Francisco Garcia: 1,983,453

Jason Thompson: 1,893,840

Quincy Douby: 1,427,040

Sean Singletary: 442,114

Patrick Ewing Jr: 442,114

Bobby Brown: 442,114

Now what does this all add up to besides bibbity bobbity boo? According to my calculations the actual salary is something like this: 70,978,510 (I might be 15 K off so don't sue me, but at worse that's like that's something like 70,995,000). So what's the point? The actual luxury tax threshold is 71,115,000 this season. Or it's something like that. The Kings are in all likelihood 20K away from the threshold.

The Rockets in the meantime, pre-Ron, according to Sham, has nearly 70 million dollars in committed salary (it's actually like 69.96 million or something like that, and that's even farther away from the luxury tax threshold than the Kings are--I'm also going to spare you the long list of Rockets with their individual salary) before the Ron trade. So, keep in mind that the Kings are probably around 70.98 million dollars in luxury tax salary, or 157 thousand under the actual threshold, and the Rockets are approximately 1.2 million dollars under threshold.

So what happened with the actual deal? Well, Let's take Ron out of the equation, and add Bobby Jackson and Donte Green to it:

D(eparted)R(on): Brad Miller: 11,375,000

Kevin Martin: 8,760,335

Kenny Thomas: 8,562,500

Bobby Jackson: 6,987,888

Shareef Abdur Rahim: 6,200,000

Mikki Moore: 5,784,480

Beno Udrih: 5,585,000

John Salmons: 5,104,000

Shelden Williams: 3,395,760

Spencer Hawes: 2,180,760

Francisco Garcia: 1,983,453

Jason Thompson: 1,893,840

Quincy Douby: 1,427,040

Donte Greene: 971,160

Sean Singletary: 442,114

Patrick Ewing Jr: 442,114

Bobby Brown: 442,114

So what's the actual salary assuming that noone off this list gets traded? 71,537,558, which is approximately 420K over the actual luxury tax limit which would cost the Kings 420 something in luxury tax (or 840K total combined salary and dollar for dollar tax), and of course there is the tax payment they would miss by doing this deal assuming they keep all the players on the roster. So? Are they going to do that? If it was you, and you didn't think Ewing, or Singletary were high contributors would you cut either or include one in a trade? Yes, you probably would. So that's really where the speculation (as many of us bandied about in several threads last night) is with the rest of the trade. If the Kings are to send a player in this deal, it's more likely to be either Singletary or Ewing Jr, as opposed to Bobby Brown. That would put the Kings under the luxury tax threshold by including one, or the other, in a trade.

So, while I've seen that the Kings are paying luxury tax this season, what I'm actually seeing is that most pundits who don't know what they're talking about are projecting based on knowing little about what committed team salary the Kings actually have. I'm a Kings fan, and I'm following this daily as it's an important story. If I'm not quite sure of what the actual nature of the contracts that Singletary, Ewing Jr, and Brown signed, how can any pundit certainly know anything 100?

What's my opinion on this? Either the Kings send Singletary or Ewing Jr to the Rockets as part of the swap, or they don't. They cut one, or both, before training camp to save as much money as possible. They could cut all three, but I don't see that being a strong possibility since the franchise went out of the way to sign Bobby Brown (I think they knew about him before Summer League, but that is a hunch).

In the end, I just wanted to give everyone a head's up, that yes, the Kings, if they didn't cut Singletary or Ewing Jr, would in fact pay luxury tax for the upcoming season. I would also like to point out that they only pay the tax at the end of the season, and not before, so they could always cut salary making sure they're well under the threshold before then. That is a likely possibility too if A) they can get somebody to take the crap-pile that is Kenny Thomas, B) if they can either trade Shareef or take his salary off the books due to medical retirement, and C) how creative they are with whom they invite to camp and what they pay them. Everything that a team pays for a player that includes bonus's, training camp invitee's, players you waive during the season, and all those types of things factor into team salary. My summation is that, while I'm not exactly sure what moves are out there for Sacramento to accomplish at this point, it's fairly certain they'll do everything within their power to get some breathing room from the tax in order to collect the luxury tax payment they get for being under the threshold.