Trade & FA 2024-25:

[F Gump]

Just to see if understand it correctly: 

1 - you have $3,701,258 Apron1 room, but also using a $1M apron cushion. I assume the later is safety measure for roster legality, but it could be reduced if transactions are settled or you are 100% sure that all numbers add up correctly as a team, right?

2 - As we are hard-capped at apron 1, no exceptions can be used to bypass this number (no Bird rights, TPE, BAE, remaining MLE, Minimum Excpetion etc.)

3 - Minimum salary is between $1,157,153 (0 years experience) and $3,303,771 (10+ years). So could fit 2 minimum salaries into spot 14 and 15, but only guys with limited experience. A 5 year guy ($2,425,403) and a rookie would fit. A 10+ year veteran and a rookie would fit, but reduce the apron cushion significantly (to ~$250k). 2x 5+ year guys would not fit at all.

1 Yes, those are the correct numbers. I use a 1M cushion, which is my guess about how they might be planning. There is no question they have a cushion number, and it is a bit flexible of course.

2 Correct. Nothing - no emergency, no injury, no opportunity -  allows them to go past the Apron, and it's a long season. Yes they can keep a smaller cushion, but I would not be surprised if internally they pencil in even a bigger one. Once you get late in the season, you can use some of the cushion on 10-days or a rest-of-season contract, perhaps on a development player. Or a rest-of-season buyout guy.

3 For our purposes, the minimum salary for apron will be 2-year (ie, player starting his 3rd year) minimum. This is the APRON cap hit for all one-year minimum contracts except a SRP playing his 1st or 2nd year (like Hardy). I have not seen a definitive chart yet for 2024-25, but I have 2,087,519 as my derived number based on the cap. You can't fit two of those into 3.7M of spending room, and if you cut into your cushion to do so you only have a cushion of about 500K. I don't think they would consider that.