Shedding Mike Bibby's contract nets you zero cap room

by pookeyguru on Feb 18, 2008 12:15 PM PST Comment 29 comments

Update [2008-2-18 15:30:16 by pookeyguru]: I originally meant to point out that TZ said this when Bibby was traded on Saturday.

The Kings save almost $11 million in 2008-09 salary, which places the Kings right below the projected cap level. As I said this morning, this means they can at the least sign Beno Udrih, and possibly (pending other trades) make a play for another midlevelish free agent. Unless TZ knows something about projected BRI, and it's very possible, I put nothing past him, it's highly doubtful the above statement is true. To be fair the Kings gain salary relief by dumping Bibby. That, I assume, was mostly TZ's point. [End Update]

Okay maybe you've figured it out from the title. Just follow the numbers and you will be ok. Read hoopshype first if you have a hard time following the numbers below.

Kevin Martin's 07-2008 salary: 1.8 million
His 08-2009 salary: Projected to start around 9 million

Mikki Moore's salary for 07-2008 season: 5.3 million
Mikki's salary for 08-2009 season: 5.9 million

If you notice however Hoopshype lists the salary in for the start of next season at 48 million.

48 + 9 + 6 = 63 million

The salary cap for this season: 55.63 million

In otherwords shedding Bibby's contract free'd up no salary cap room. It just means the Maloof's won't pay luxury tax next season, and Petrie came up with a deal that will at least keep the Kings off that threshold for now.

Let me say this though before you get giddy that the Kings could keep Artest. Any sign & trade in the offseason brings salary back, and one could easily surmise, given the history of s&t's, that if a s&t does happen, it would increase the amount of salary coming the Kings way. The Kings won't be able to keep Miller, or Thomas, or Artest, and actually have cap room next off-season. The Bibby trade gave this team breathing room from paying luxury tax, but not much else. It was a start, but the dynamite still needs to be fully spread around the foundation before you talk about cap room, free agents, and rebuilding.

Furthermore, if Artest opts out it still won't change what you can pay Beno Udrih in the offseason. The Kings will be probably 2 or 3 million under the cap at that point, and the only thing you can offer Beno is still the Mid Level exception.

[Side Note: Before you go huh!?! I'll explain here. You can't just offer a guy the Mid Level along with 3 million of cap room you already have; The Salary cap holds your free agents against you until you renounce them. If Artest opts out, he is still the Kings free agent, and unless they renounce him, which is possible, but unlikely if he stays by that point, or give a s&t this team absolutely has no salary relief coming provided Miller Thomas Rahim & Moore are still on the roster.]

In otherwords, unless you trade Brad Miller and Ron Artest, coupled with the Bibby salary dump, no cap room is coming. It's something to keep in mind as we all come up with our thoughts and feelings toward player movement at the trade deadline.

Poll

Is cap room important for the Kings in the 2008 offseason?

Yes

13 votes

No

17 votes

It depends whose on the market

12 votes

42 votes | Poll has closed

(This is a FanPost from a member of the Sactown Royalty community. The views expressed come from the member, and not Sactown Royalty staff.)

0 recs | Comment 29 comments

Story-email Email Printer Print

Comments

Just posted this on iawash's discussion too

Three expiring contracts? Check.
Adios Artest and Thomas? Check.

http://games.espn.go.com/nba/features/traderesult?players=25~849~42~234~347&teams=24~24~23~23~23 &te=&cash=

Horry would need to be waived.

In Geoff we trust...

by Exhibit G on Feb 18, 2008 12:21 PM PST reply actions 0 recs

Unclear

If we didn't manage to trade Artest this season--which I still think we will--wouldn't his salary disappear as soon as he signed with another team? So we wouldn't have room to sign Beno at the start of the season, but we could once Artest signes with another team, correct?

That being said, I think this is the very reason GP is pushing so har for tying K-9 to any Artest deal if he can pull it off.

As far as cap space, I'm all for it, primarily because it gives us flexibility. But I'd be okay with a sign and trade for Artest if it brought in the right pieces, even if it didn't get us much space.

It's really the chicken and the egg. To you get cap space to find the right pieces or do you find the right pieces instead of cap space?

The only drawback I see to focusing primarily on cap space is how easy it is to overpay for free agents. Teams get stupid when they have a lot of money. They may end up with the piece they want, but invariably at a higher price than the piece is worth.

by SavageBeast on Feb 18, 2008 12:43 PM PST reply actions 0 recs

I mean to say at the start of the summer,

not season. Got to quit taking the blonde's meds.

by SavageBeast on Feb 18, 2008 12:44 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

The Kings can renounce their rights to Artest.

The Kings will have to move quickly during the off-season to solidify their roster. If Artest is still a King, they need to either sign him, sign and trade him or renounce him quickly in order to get in the free-agency fray. Once the Artest situation is completed they can move on to Beno, offering a portion or all of the mid-level exemption. If the Kings have cap space (Artest paired with SAR,K-9, Mikki) they need to spend that money first, then move onto the mid-level exemption to sign Beno or use whatever space they free up to sign Beno and then move onto the exemption.

This cloudy picture should be cleared up by the end of this week IMO because I think Artest will be dealt and I'm hoping he takes K-9 with him. I these two are dealt for expiring contracts (a stretch, I know), the Kings would drop their cap number to approximately 46 million, Leaving the team roughly (total approximation) 11 mill under the cap + mid-level exemption. I have long been a hater of the MLE, I feel that it perpetuates the vicious cycle of mediocrity but in this situation, the Kings really need to retain Beno and the MLE allows this to happen with or without any trade.

StR- Where Pookey is long, Otis is short and Section brings down the house.

by jjham15 on Feb 18, 2008 1:22 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

JJ I like your thinking

But there is this:

So it is not true that being under the cap necessarily means a team has room to sign free agents. For example, assume the cap is $49.5 million, and a team has $43 million committed to salaries. They also have a Mid-Level exception for $5 million and a Traded Player exception for $5.5 million. Even though their salaries put them $6.5 million under the cap, their exceptions are added to their salaries, putting them at $53.5 million, or $4 million over the cap. So they actually have no cap room to sign free agents, and must instead use their exceptions.

I am the stone that the builder refused I am the visual, the inspiration That made Lady Sing the Blues..I'm the spark that makes your idea bright...

by pookeyguru on Feb 18, 2008 1:30 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Read

this as it will fully explain it.

I am the stone that the builder refused I am the visual, the inspiration That made Lady Sing the Blues..I'm the spark that makes your idea bright...

by pookeyguru on Feb 18, 2008 1:32 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Damn those loop-hole closing bastards

Good diary. Thanks for crunching the #s.

I voted no, since I don't want us signing any FAs of note this year anyway. Think we're still at least a year away from wanting to do that.

by Kfan in Korea on Feb 18, 2008 1:39 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

I voted no too

Now it's time to go (i need to stop saying that).

I am the stone that the builder refused I am the visual, the inspiration That made Lady Sing the Blues..I'm the spark that makes your idea bright...

by pookeyguru on Feb 18, 2008 1:47 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Interesting.

I need to write a paper on the Decameron but when I'm done, I will look deeper into this. Thanks for the link.

StR- Where Pookey is long, Otis is short and Section brings down the house.

by jjham15 on Feb 18, 2008 1:41 PM PST reply actions 0 recs

I need to go to work & scream at ppl

and decide what I want to eat before I leave.

As far as the whole being under the 15 man limit I'm not sure about that. I wonder if that's an in-season limit. The wolves did that huge trade with what 6 players going to Minnesota for just KG? So how is that possible (unless you're allowed to do that over the summer) and not during the regular season? I need to do some investigating also. Talk to yall tomorrow.

I am the stone that the builder refused I am the visual, the inspiration That made Lady Sing the Blues..I'm the spark that makes your idea bright...

by pookeyguru on Feb 18, 2008 1:46 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

In season limit

That's my guess too. Pre-season you're allowed to carry a larger roster for training camp etc. I didn't realize it was a hard limit - I thought you could waive them as they entered the door.

by Kfan in Korea on Feb 18, 2008 2:21 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Bibby Trade

By next week, after the Hawks lose five straight on their Western road trip to run their losing streak to nine, Bibby will be toast and all the wags will be saying the Hawks were dumb to do this deal.

And then they will say the Hawks could of had Paul or Deron Williams but instead are stuck with a washed-up Mike Bibby. Then they will start picking on his deficiencies -- too small, too slow, poor D, shoots too much, etc.

So much for that honeymoon.

The bar has been set so low for the Kings that they will probably fare better with such scrutiny. Williams can't be any worse than Mikki, so that's a plus. And Beno will probably play pretty well, and that will look good.

Chalk one up for Petrie on the PR front.

by coolcatreportdotcom on Feb 18, 2008 7:48 PM PST reply actions 0 recs

That didn't take long

Here's some good clean fun at the expense of Mike Bibby and the Atlanta Hawks. The title is "Top 10 Things More Boring Than the Bibby Trade." Some nice zingers. Disclaimer: Please skip if you are a nitpicker.

http://deadspin.com/358082/top-10-things-that-are-more-boring-than-the-bibby-trade

by coolcatreportdotcom on Feb 19, 2008 2:58 PM PST reply actions 0 recs

I think Deadspin reads me

3. NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement: If you ever find out a human being has clawed his own eyes out with a rusty garden tool, chances are he did it after reading the CBA in full.

Seriously I think they wrote that just for ME.

I am the stone that the builder refused I am the visual, the inspiration That made Lady Sing the Blues..I'm the spark that makes your idea bright...

by pookeyguru on Feb 20, 2008 1:48 AM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Webber

We'd be in a better position if we decided not to trade Webber for dead weight and just waited for his gargantuan contract to expire. According to GP, we traded him to gain flexibility. Well, good luck with trading Thomas. I could live with Webber's fat contract.

by kingme on Feb 20, 2008 10:38 AM PST reply actions 0 recs

Learned from past mistakes?

The Bibby trade is everything the Webber trade should have been. No long term salaries, with an unproven prospect and late round pick to boot.

If Thomas had been worth ANYTHING at all, he would have been flipped for a better-fitting piece, which was GP's plan in the first place.

This time he took no such risk (even Williams is a 1.5-year rental if he doesn't work out).

by smgmatt on Feb 20, 2008 12:23 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Webber didn't have that kind of value

His contract was just too big to dump like that. Wishful thinking, while soothing, does noone any good to re-write history that doesn't exist. That type of value simply didn't exist for the Kings at that time.

I am the stone that the builder refused I am the visual, the inspiration That made Lady Sing the Blues..I'm the spark that makes your idea bright...

by pookeyguru on Feb 20, 2008 4:59 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

I wouldn't say that I'm re-writing history

I don't know if there was a better offer out there for Webber (I doubt it), but as glad I was at the time that he was traded, I questioned bringing in any contracts that were LONGER than his (multiple years longer at that).

I know the idea was to flip the smaller pieces in other deals, but that never happened, so the incomplete vision of the trade was worse than the reality of just keeping him in the first place.

Had no trade been made (or even if they bought him out), Webber's contract would be off the books already.

For the record, I was never excited about the Kenny Thomas era, and have been waiting for it to end since I first heard he was coming in the Webber trade. When I thought he'd be flipped for pretty much anything else, I was excited about the trade as a whole (and lobbied other Kings fans that the C-Webb trade would be good when GP completed it); when I realized that he was completely untradeable, I thought the Webber trade wasn't a very good one.

by smgmatt on Feb 20, 2008 5:19 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Depends on which perspective you look at

If you're the Maloof's you do the deal because it put you out of luxury tax payment range (that's why I suspect they did the deal when they did).

I heard the idea of being able to break apart the contracts to get the team something else. We all know that didn't happen, but I think that had as much to do with the fact that the Kings were trying to rebuild & win at the same time. That was part of the problem. The other part of the problem was they did shave some of the money off the Webber contract over time, and have done so with the Bibby trade as well. For 3 really bad contracts in (Webber, Bibby, Miller) the Kings haven't suffered nearly as badly as say Orlando did paying luxury tax for having a player who played a totaly of 150 games in that uniform?

All in all I think the expectation that this made the Kings worse is a naive one. The move I think was made more from a perspective about money than it was about winning totally. (I also think had they not done the deal, and assuming Brad breaks his leg in Washington, then the Kings would have missed the playoffs, and been stuck in a worse money situation.)

All in all smg, while I understand your apprehension about doing the deal, I don't think the reality of what you say about keeping Webber would have been something the Kings would have done without paying the luxury tax. That's the part people forget. This is, btw, not an argument for Kenny Thomas.

I am the stone that the builder refused I am the visual, the inspiration That made Lady Sing the Blues..I'm the spark that makes your idea bright...

by pookeyguru on Feb 20, 2008 5:25 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

As a fan, and not an owner....

I don't have to write the checks.

That said, I would have much preferred that the Kings pay the Luxury Tax up front on C-Webb's contract, instead of the K9-Tax in the years following the end of C-Webb's contract.

A do, however, understand why they would prefer to do it the other way around (plus, the idea of smaller tradeable pieces had to be a bonus).

As I stated above (although it may have been buried in the rest of my comment), I was excited about the Webber trade at the time, and even defended it for a long time (believing that the "second half" of the trade would happen). I didn't like the deal by itself, but believed the spin that it was only PHASE I of a bigger overall plan.

I didn't really feel negatively towards it until I realized that there was, indeed, no "PHASE II" coming.

by smgmatt on Feb 20, 2008 5:38 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

I read what you write so yeah I saw it

I just didn't feel the need to add on. After all if you don't like the trade, and you don't, then I'm not going to spend time convincing you you're wrong. I'm not even going to say you're wrong. I'm going to say, that dealing from a realistic point of view, that the guys who write the checks DO care therefore I don't bother to live in fantasyland because it makes no difference if I did. Where I dabble in fantasyland, is where I can make trades I suppose, and I try to leave it at that.

That being said I understand your point, and if money was not an object, which it always is but let's say it wasn't, then I would totally agree with you.

I am the stone that the builder refused I am the visual, the inspiration That made Lady Sing the Blues..I'm the spark that makes your idea bright...

by pookeyguru on Feb 20, 2008 5:53 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

I didn't mean to say money was no object

I was just pointing out that the money would be spent one way or another, and in paying the Luxury Tax at the time, they would have more flexibility afterwards to keep the team a contender.

The catch, obviously, is that if the Kings didn't have K9 they'd be paying that money to another player, but if that player made them more competitive, then they could be in the playoff hunt (and not in the "dreaming of the 8th seed" sense), which would bring in more revenue . . . thus making that Luxury Tax money back faster (and possibly assisting in an arena deal, although that may be a stretch).

6 of 1, half-dozen of the other, I suppose. There are never any guarantees of course, but that's a gamble that some (Mark Cuban & Paul Allen come to mind) would take on the chance that the money spent would be made on the back end in some fashion.

by smgmatt on Feb 20, 2008 6:01 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

Ok let's move on

What would have happened with Webber had he started to pout about not playing on a championship level team any longer? (I think the Kings avoided that which was the more prudent part of the trade.)

My personal opinion was that they didn't want Webber around, and couldn't, when they changed the team because he would have had a fit publicly. I think the team did the right thing because he was having a negative effect on both Bibby and Miller.

So money aside, I think the larger issue was that they were able to somewhat move the roster forward despite the obvious drawback of taking K9 in the swap.

I would do it for these reasons:

Saves you luxury tax
Allows you to trade Corliss or Skinner quickly (which they did with Skinner avoiding paying luxury tax again)
Webber hurt the team in rebounding
Webber hurt the team's offense when his jumper didn't go in
Webber was being paid at a superstar's salary despite not being one at that time

So yes, knowing what I do today, and knowing all the subsequent decisions since, I would still do the trade.

I am the stone that the builder refused I am the visual, the inspiration That made Lady Sing the Blues..I'm the spark that makes your idea bright...

by pookeyguru on Feb 20, 2008 6:25 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

All good points

I agree with you about 95%, and you point out some great reasons backing the position up, which I also agree with.

Buying him out would have solved some of the issues you mentioned, but that would have caused an even bigger fan fallout than the actual trade already did (if the "casual" fans don't see a "name" player back, they think it's a terrible trade, as we've seen more recently with the Bibby trade).

by smgmatt on Feb 20, 2008 6:33 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

If listening to "Sportsline 1140"

is an indication of fan's reaction in Sacramento to the Kings, I'm glad I no longer live in the Evil Cowtown. Screw that nonsense.

I am the stone that the builder refused I am the visual, the inspiration That made Lady Sing the Blues..I'm the spark that makes your idea bright...

by pookeyguru on Feb 20, 2008 6:37 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs

No offense intended pookey

But I think that is often the one piece you leave out when you talk about trades and moves the Kings should make to improve the product on the floor long term.

You have to remember that the Maloofs are business owners and are marketing their product to the masses, not necessarily the nuts and bolts fans you find on a blog like this. They have to fill seats, and they need a new arena.

When you get rid of a C-Webb, or a Bibby or a Peja, the casual fan who connects a bit more emotionally to those players are going to be upset. And I don't think the owners are going to look very good with the "screw 'em if they don't like it" attitude.

Ultimately, you might be right about every free agent, trade or draft pick consideration you profer here. But in the real world, the ownership has some additional issues to fight through.

Disclaimer: I am anti-Bibby.

by otis29 on Feb 20, 2008 7:50 PM PST up reply actions 0 recs