Please. Stop posting and saying this deal doesn't hurt the team. It does. Read some of the cap space posts. A lot of doors closed because of this move. Sure, the Maloofs got a little richer, but the deal itself did hurt the Kings.
Actually, I think the deal may have in some ways
increased cap flexibility for future trades. Hear me out.
First off, let me reiterate a point that has been noted before in this thread: because we are not over the cap, Hilton (I accidentally typed "Shelden" at first, ha!) can be packaged with other players without a waiting period. This is important.
Now, before acquiring Armstrong we were about $4M under the cap. That meant that we could absorb up to $4M extra in a trade without the trade having to comply with the 125% rule. For instance, we could send out $6M in salary (e.g. Beno) and acquire $10M in salary, and still be under the cap, so the 125% rule would not apply. However, we could not have sent out $6M in salary and acquired $11M in salary - that would have put us over the cap and the deal would not have been under the 125% rule. We would have had to add salary to our side of the trade - but May would not be enough (barely) and we're basically using everybody else with a small contract.
After acquiring Armstrong we're only about $1M under the cap. We can't send out $6M in salary and acquire $10M, because we would be over the cap and the 125% rule does not apply. But we can send out $6M plus Armstrong ($2.8M) - that's totally within the 125% rule. Furthermore, now we could send out $6M + Armstrong ($8.8M total) and get $11M back, just barely.
So basically here are our limits for a few scenarios, before and after Armstrong:
Trade Beno ($6M): about $10M, still under cap
Trade Beno + Armstrong ($8.8M): about $11M, 125% rule
Trade Beno + May ($6.85M): about $10.85M, still under cap
Trade Beno + May + Armstrong ($9.65M) : about $12M, 125% rule
Trade Nocioni ($7.5M): about $11.5M, still under cap
Trade Nocioni + Armstrong ($10.3M) : about $13M, 125% rule
Trade Nocioni + May ($8.35M): about $12.35M, still under cap
Trade Nocioni + May + Armstrong ($11.15M) : about $14M, 125% rule
Trade Nocioni + Beno + May ($14.35M): about $18.35M, still under cap
Trade Nocioni + Beno + May + Armstrong ($17.15M): about $21.5M, 125% rule
So it turns out that we can actually absorb more money in contracts now than we could before acquiring Armstrong (about $1M for trading Beno alone, over $3M for Nocioni + Beno + May). On the other hand, in order to do it, we have to send out that extra $2.8M Armstrong contract (which by the trade deadline will actually be prorated to under $1.4M). There's some give and take - teams really looking to save money (e.g. luxury tax concerns) can't do as much savings using our cap space now. But, if we're trying to grab a big contract, the maximum contract that we can bring back is now bigger.
