re: Tobias Harris

quote:

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Forgive me for asking

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Asking and learning is what this board is for.

quote:

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Asik coming off the books would give use 8-9 mil in space due to his poison pill contract?

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First, the poison pill. The way Asik's contract is structured is an unintended consequence of a rule meant to help teams keep 2nd rounders that out perform their short 2 year rookie deals. The poison pill part is that had Chicago matched, this 3/$24 deal would have counted $5/$5/$14 against their cap, but for Houston the cap hit was averaged to $8 over all 3 years, but the money is still paid as the contract is written. The poison pill is the $14.5 million that would have blown up Chicago's cap had they matched. We still had to pay all the money, but the cap hit was just $8.3 million.

As for the question of "Asik's $8 million is coming off the books, that means I have $8 million to spend right?" the answer is not necessarily. The salary cap is projected to increase to $67 million. With all of the contracts we are currently committed to and/or likely to keep

Holiday
Gordon
Tyreke
Ryno
AD
Pondexter
Cole
Roster holds (have to account for at least 12 players on the rookie minimum salary)

So the current roster minus Asik, Cunningham, Ajinca, Withey, Babbitt and Jimmer adds up to $61.4 million, or $5.5 million under the projected cap. But going under the cap means losing your exceptions, including the MLE which is basically the same amount as the cap space you now have. Additionaly you lose exceptions that you probably could have resigned Ajinca and Cunningham with. So not re-signing Asik not only doesn't give you enough cap space to pursue a comparable alternative like RoLo or Koufos, it also costs you the ability to retain key bench contributors. Where as keeping Asik lets you keep everyone else and use the MLE to add a $5ish million player to the mix.

The question with Asik really isn't whether to resign him or not, it's whether you give him an overpriced 1 year deal with an eye towards moving on in 2016, or give him a 4 year declining deal where in year 3 and 4 he's just making decent backup money thanks to the escalating cap.

There are a few scenarios I can think of where we don't retain Asik, but those involve some fairly significant trades with at least 2 of Gordon/Anderson/Tyreke leaving but it also requires the right things breaking our way with other teams' situations so it's unlikely.