2021-2022 ROSTER TALK: [ARCHIVED]

[BackToSquareOne]

1. Yes.
2. I'll have to think about it. It's complicated, and the caffeine is wearing off.  

I suspect it may be more involved than that, as I believe using the TPE in this situation requires two separate deals. My instinct is that they'd have to order it to first use the TPE to clear enough cap space so that NY is still under the cap even after the second Brunson deal. But maybe others have different interpretations.

Thanks for this. Let me have another try. (My warning about how I'm feeling today still applies and this may well be hot garbage.)

1st of all I'm going to ignore the $100,000s (to start with, just for simpliicty).


Let's suppose two teams, M and K, are both operating over the cap and intend to stay that way. (Eg, Mavs and Knicks.)

Team M wants to S&T a player B (eg, Brunson) to them K. His salary with team K will be 2*x. They include other players with salary totalling y (Eg, could be team M send one single other player P (eg Powell), whose salary is y.) 

Let me try to figure out what team K would have to send in order for the deal to be legal.

Team K is adding 2*x + y in salary. So they need to send out at least 4/5 * (2*x + y) in salary (again, ignoring $100,000s).

Team M is sending x + y in salary, so they can take back at most 5/4 * (x+y) in salary.

The trade appears to be legal provided 5/4 * (x+y) >= 4/5 * (2*x +y)  -----(#).

Simplifying, we get (#) is equivalent to (x+y) > = 16/25 (2*x +y) which is equivalent to 9/25 * y >= 7/25 * x.

So the trade appears to be legal provided y is >= 7/9 * x. 

Worked examples.  If x = 9mm and y = 7mm (fwiw, x = 9mm corresponds to player B making $80mm over 4 years) then team K has to send out exactly 20mm in salary. If x = 9mm and y = 11mm then team K need to send out anywhere from 23.2mm to 25mm.

For fixed x, as y increases there is a little more flexibility in what salary team K needs to send out, but not much.