Yes. It's a new wrinkle in the CBA. Once the season starts, if a team has not used its MLE to sign a player (we didn't this year) it becomes possible to use it as a trade exception. We can therefore use it to acquire any player with a salary up to $12.8M. We would have to send something back (typically picks). The Wizards would not *technically* get our MLE, but they would get a trade exception in the amount of the Jonas contract, which is $9.9M.
Assuming such a deal can be worked out, we can actually use either the MLE ($12.8M) or the exception created from yesterday's trade (reported to be $16.8M). In either case, we would use only $9.9M of the exception and the remainder would still be usable.
It's important to note that we can't aggregate these exceptions, so there's no way of picking up a $29.6M player. Also, reports aren't perfectly clear but we're maybe $14M under the apron, where we are hard-capped, so we can't spend that much without shedding other salary anyways.
Assuming such a deal can be worked out, we can actually use either the MLE ($12.8M) or the exception created from yesterday's trade (reported to be $16.8M). In either case, we would use only $9.9M of the exception and the remainder would still be usable.
It's important to note that we can't aggregate these exceptions, so there's no way of picking up a $29.6M player. Also, reports aren't perfectly clear but we're maybe $14M under the apron, where we are hard-capped, so we can't spend that much without shedding other salary anyways.
