Solve for X

[bajaden]

No, I don't think that's quite correct. This was actually a really tough one to chase down, but I'm pretty sure I finally got it.

When a player is amnestied:
1) Any fully unguaranteed seasons on the contract go away. (Does not apply to Salmons)
2) The original team is (initially) on the hook for the entire sum of the guaranteed money in the contract. As far as Salmons goes, Kings would be on the hook for $7.583M ('13-'14) + $1M ('14-'15). Kings would not be on the hook for $6.5M unguaranteed ('14-'15).
3) The player is made available for waiver claims. Any team claiming a player with any partially guaranteed seasons must fully guarantee those seasons as a condition of the waiver claim. As such, the absolute minimum waiver bid for Salmons would be $6.5M (to fully guarantee the second season).

So if there were no bid for Salmons, we would owe him $8.583M and he would be a free agent. (If he were to then sign a contract somewhere else I think we would get reimbursed for the amount of his new contract, but I'm not certain.) If there was at least one bid, then Salmons would be under contract with the winning bidder for two years. Any amount in the winning bid over $6.5M would be reimbursed to us, going towards our $8.583M.

At any rate, if we amnesty Salmons, we cannot be responsible for any of the unguaranteed money, but we can be responsible for 100% of the guaranteed money (and we'd be lucky to get more than a minimum salary's worth of reimbursement when all is said and done.)

Arrrrgh! I knew I should have read futher down before explaining how amnesty works. My bad! I hate redunditcy....

 

[bajaden]

I agree getting rid of salmons is relatively low on the priority list. I believe we actually have some good players and a couple of franchise guy's already on the roster. Now if we can package one of our "chuckers" and or JT along with the pick to get a legitimate starting SF then I'm all for it. IT, MT and Jimmer all have their own qualities but it's imperative to move AT LEAST ONE and move on. My personal list of players currently on roster who I would like to keep around long term are Cuz, Evans, IT, Patterson and T. Douglas.

* for the record I think JT is a solid role player who can play both C/PF but is really not a starter on a competitive team.

Although were in need of a quality SF, were also thin in the front court when size is considered. The last thing we need to do is trade away one of our players that has legit size in JT. Unless of course were going to make some moves to replace him and also add to the frontcourt. Otherwise, all your doing is shoring up one spot while weakening another.

 

[MassachusettsKingsFan]

I'd be more interested in dumping Hayes than Salmons, although I'd certainly trade both.

Salmons can still contribute at multiple positions. He was OK last season for stretches. He shouldn't be starting, but as a bench guy you can yank if he isn't playing well ... he's more valuable than chuck, and he has a better contract.

 

[bajaden]

I think that aside from looking at Salmons as someone we want to get rid of for the sake of just getting rid of him, the whole picture has to be taken into consideration. I agree with the Capt that sacrificing a good player just to rid ourselves of Salmons flys in the face of logic, and its not necessary. If we want to rid ourselves of him, then amnesty is the way to go. It accomplishes getting rid of Salmons, and it also gets us significantly under the cap.

James Johnson, Toney Douglas and Tyreke are all in the restricted freeagent class, and will become such if we give them a qualifying offer, which I'm sure we'll do with Tyreke, but not so sure about Douglas or Johnson. Personally, I'd let Johnson walk. Thomas has either a team option, or a non guaranteed contract. Doesn't really matter which because the result is the same, its up to the team to decide whether to guarantee the contract, or pick up the option. We could just let him walk, but I seriously doubt we'd do that. He has at the very least, trade value.

Not counting the salarys of Tyreke, Douglas, and Johnson, our total salaries come to $42,019,852.00. That includes picking up Thomas contract. Now if we were to amnesty Salmons, then our total salaries would come to $34,436,852.00. Last years cap was $58,044,000.00, and its likely to go up above 59 mil this coming year, maybe even up to 60 mil. But just based on last years cap, we would have $23,607,148.00 to work with, which is a significant amount. So to my mind there a great advantage to amnesting Salmons.

 

[Bricklayer]

Is TD restricted? I thought he was an un.

If restricted we could have a much better chance of keeping him, just with the organizational chaos who knows who has a feel for what he did while here or if he just slips through the cracks.

 

[Gilles]

I believe Salmons won't be amnestied so it all exercise in futility but still in the quote Coon expands on the process of bidding on amnestied players - if a team wants to pick up an amnestied player then they have to assume at least all non-guaranteed portion of his deal.
Full quote with a question that triggered it:

Dear Larry,
Please inform us about minimum bids for amnestied players in the secondary waiver auction.
Is there an incentive for a team with cap space to bid that minimum amount on a player that it thinks is either valuable for itself or deems to be definitely tradeable to a contender in the summer? If true, then, for instance, if Rip Hamilton had not been bought out but amnestied, a team sure would have swooped in with the minimum bid.
Thanks for taking my question

Larry Coon

I agree with you. In fact, that could be why the Pistons chose to buy-out Rip rather than amnesty him — they wanted to give him the opportunity to choose his next destination.

There are lots of guys for whom a minimum offer is a very low-risk proposition, and I don’t expect any valuable player to clear waivers and become a free agent. In fact, I’m mildly surprised that Gilbert Arenas did so. This is the point of having secondary waivers at all — they didn’t want amnestied players all flocking to LA and Miami. They wanted other teams to have a shot at them, and this process provides that shot.

The minimum bid computation is a little complex. I won’t explain it fully here, but I’ll summarize. Just keep this in mind — they didn’t want teams to have to pay any more for their amnestied players than they would have had to pay had they waived the player outright through the regular waiver process. Partially-guaranteed and non-guaranteed salary throws a monkey wrench into the process. If a team waives a player, they normally don’t have to pay non-protected salary, but in the amnesty process, the player gets paid all such salary, so the waiving team would be on the hook for some of it.

They fixed this by making the amnesty bids include at least all non-guaranteed salary in seasons for which at least some salary is guaranteed. So if a player has two years left and the first year is 100% guaranteed for $9 million, and the second year has $6 million of his $10 million salary guaranteed, then the bid has to cover the remaining $4 million.

For seasons that are completely non-guaranteed, the bid can ignore them, but the winning team has to pay the entire amount.

 

[MassachusettsKingsFan]

Is TD restricted? I thought he was an un.

If restricted we could have a much better chance of keeping him, just with the organizational chaos who knows who has a feel for what he did while here or if he just slips through the cracks.

ESPN and the Hoopsworld salary cap page has him as restricted. I didn't think he was either for whatever reason, but thats obviously good.

 

[Gilles]

Is TD restricted? I thought he was an un.

If restricted we could have a much better chance of keeping him, just with the organizational chaos who knows who has a feel for what he did while here or if he just slips through the cracks.

According to storytellers qualifying offer of $3,101,820 can be extended to TD. Whether new FO will do that is another question.
On the whole Salmons amnesty I think a lot depends on what Salmons thinks about his role. This season he looked like he might be willing and comfortable settling into role, but next moment he start gunning. It might have been Smart's influence with his plays for Salmons out of TOs or Salmons just turning back to his early career attitude.
I think two of IT, Jimmer, Salmons and MT must be gone for sure. Tyreke, IT and Salmons might be guard rotation for a season if all available resources have to be channeled to acquire a very good SF. But it all hinges on Salmons willingness to become a role player.

 

[DesertFox]

I actually think Salmons has a place on this team as long as he isn't starting at SF.

As a secondary ballhandler at the 2, or point-forward off the bench, he would be a fine roleplayer.

I've never understood the idea of Salmons as a SF, as he doesn't have great size, lacks a vertical game, and is not a good rebounder. Most guys at 6-6/6-7 play SF because of a shooting or ballhandling deficiency. But Salmons has a long range game and very good ballhandling ability. Sounds a lot like a combo guard.
Of course, this is the team that tried to turn Evans into a SF.

 

[bajaden]

I believe Salmons won't be amnestied so it all exercise in futility but still in the quote Coon expands on the process of bidding on amnestied players - if a team wants to pick up an amnestied player then they have to assume at least all non-guaranteed portion of his deal.
Full quote with a question that triggered it:

I agree that because of the that rule, it makes it less likely that someone will bid on Salmons, which would stick us with paying his entire salary for the next two years. We could waive him, like Detriot did with Hamiliton, but then his salary would count against the cap, so no advantage for us there. So whether we amnesty him or not depends on what kind of changes new management wants to make, and how much they're willing to pay to accomplish it. Eating his salary for two years is a bit hard to swallow, but it would certainly show committment on their part to revamp the team and to do it quickly.

Of course they may believe that Salmons has value to the team, and therefore wouldn't consider using amnesty on him. It would be nice to have the cap space with Tyreke being a restricted freeagent.

 

[Bricklayer]

I actually think Salmons has a place on this team as long as he isn't starting at SF.

As a secondary ballhandler at the 2, or point-forward off the bench, he would be a fine roleplayer.

I've never understood the idea of Salmons as a SF, as he doesn't have great size, lacks a vertical game, and is not a good rebounder. Most guys at 6-6/6-7 play SF because of a shooting or ballhandling deficiency. But Salmons has a long range game and very good ballhandling ability. Sounds a lot like a combo guard.
Of course, this is the team that tried to turn Evans into a SF.

I agree with a lot of that. Returning Salmons as a starter or even big minute guy in the rotation is a non-starter with me. But as a lesser roleplayer, perhaps Reke's backup at SG off the bench, I don't think he's a terrible fit just until his contract runs out. Versatile like Reke. A little defense, a little shooting a little veteranness. Just please god no more 30min a night games. 6 minutes each half and ok. Maybe. Still going to be a lot of empty empty 2pt 1reb nights. I will shed not a single tear if he's traded, amnestied, or tied up in duct tape and thrown out the window, but as long as he's buried down where his talent says he should be, its not going to kill me to see him back as a deeper reserve type. We could do better, but if you dump him it just opens one extra hole we have to try to patch up during what already promises to be an active summer.

 

[NewArena]

Haven't read the thread yet, but I'm willing to part with Thornton, for sure. Next to Evans, I still don't like that fit. Whether or not they start together, doesn't matter. They both need a significant amount of playing time, and they'll more than likely be on the court throughout different increments of the game.

How about Granger? With Paul George emerging, I don't see how they really make sense together. Unless George plays the 2, and I just haven't been paying attention. What's Grangers contract looking like?

 

[Gilles]

Next summer Salmons becomes great trading asset as you can basically assume $10,5 million in salary for $1 million. Basically he becomes the living cap space.

 

[Mr. S£im Citrus]

... Unfortunately, I read the header to the poll and voted before reading Slim's first post, so I didn't interpret the question correctly...

Sorry; I wanted to add a "Read first post before voting" disclaimer, but the field wouldn't allow that many characters.

 

[kingsnation]

I agree with a lot of that. Returning Salmons as a starter or even big minute guy in the rotation is a non-starter with me. But as a lesser roleplayer, perhaps Reke's backup at SG off the bench, I don't think he's a terrible fit just until his contract runs out. Versatile like Reke. A little defense, a little shooting a little veteranness. Just please god no more 30min a night games. 6 minutes each half and ok. Maybe. Still going to be a lot of empty empty 2pt 1reb nights. I will shed not a single tear if he's traded, amnestied, or tied up in duct tape and thrown out the window, but as long as he's buried down where his talent says he should be, its not going to kill me to see him back as a deeper reserve type. We could do better, but if you dump him it just opens one extra hole we have to try to patch up during what already promises to be an active summer.

Thanks for the lol.

When it comes to the poll question, I voted IT. But as long as its MT, IT or Jimmer, I'm good. Whoever would land us the best deal possible. Heck, I'd throw in all 3.