Ok, how to explain:
1) There is a salary cap, this year its $48 mil or something
2) If you go over the cap, you can't pick up extra players except with several exceptions which are granted to every team -- a midlevel exception, a lowlevel exception.
3) There is also a luxury tax which is placed on teams that greatly exceed the cap. Not sure wher the barrier is this year, but let's just say $55mil. If you go over it, basically every dollar extra spent costs you double. If you're at $58 mil and exceed the tax threhhold by $3 mil, then you pay an extra $3 mil (for a total of $6 mil, as if you're payroll was actually $61 mil, rather than $58mil).
4) this one time waiver deal allows teams to waive a player and avoid the TAX, but has no effect on their overall salary at all.
5) THUS, if we had a salary of $58 milion, and waived Thomas and his $6million dollar contract, we would NOT be counted as having a $52 million salary. We would still have $58 million in salary. Its just that the extra money we would pay for being over the tax limit (the $3mil over the $55 mil tax threhhold) would not count double. But we are still at $58 million, still can't sign anybody except with an exception. Still can't gain anymore players. Still am paying KTs $6-#7million salary for the rest of the decade. The ONLY advantage is to the Maloofs in not paying a $3 million tax. But for the team, we've just lost a player, are going to keep on paying him anyway, still can't sign anybody except with the exceptions, and now will have $6-$7 million (about 15% of the cap) that's just non-productive and totally wasted for another 5 years. No chance to trade it away. No chance to get a player with it. Just wasted.