Guru wrote:How are incentives counted in the cap?
At the beginning of the year, they are counted in the cap if you hit them the previous year and not in the cap if you didn't hit them the previous year. This is for how you calculate space relative to FA.
At the end of the year, they are calculated based on whether you hit them in actuality (this is relevant for the luxury tax).
I believe, though I am not 100% certain, that you cannot have any incentives that can potentially push you above the apron if they hit if you do something else that hard caps you at the apron (say you are below the 1st apron and use the full MLE which would hard cap you at the 1st apron, then you can't have an incentive that would push you beyond the 1st apron even if it is unlikely to hit).
I like DDR's game but I moreso don't want to lose the asset.
I dislike DDR's game (grifting free throws and mid range jumpers) as it doesn't really fit super neatly into the NBA and it's hard to build around perimeter players that can't space the floor due to lack of shooting. I love DDR as a person (great mentor for young players, great attitude, etc..).
You may agree or disagree, but generally speaking, when a guy signs a new contract as a free agent, unless they are in the category where any team in their right mind would max them, they are more often than not, not an asset after signing. The theory behind that is the no brainer max guys are constrained artificially in salary and thus mostly worth more than their contract. The other guys are priced at the price of the highest bidder and thus far less likely to be worth more than their contract.
In this sense, it is really unlikely to me that DDR is an asset that you will get anything back for if you resign him. You will get his on court value, but you shouldn't think that you will be able to parlay him into different assets for a retool or rebuild at a later period in time.
I don't put a lot of value in the on court value of players over the next two years as I see no path to move up the East standings, objectively, we will bring back less next year than we had last year, and our improvement will be based on the improvement of young players, potential addition by subtraction if we could remove negative players, and whomever we bring in at the min and in the draft, vs our depreciating assets which will be further decline of DeMar/Vuc as they continue to age out of the league and trimming of the roster to fit underneath the luxury tax.
I think the downward pressures will be greater than the upward pressures and we only won 39 games last year and 40 the year before. It's also worth noting that we were obscenely lucky in clutch games which is unlikely to repeat (we were extremely unlucky the year before and extremely lucky two years before, and lots of studies show clutch doesn't really exist and is luck that looks like skill with small enough sample sizes) that also can provide significant downward pressure, better healthy may provide an upswing if Pat and Lonzo are healthier, but the biggest injury is Zach and the press conference would indicate to me that he won't be on the roster at the start of the season anyway.
Anyway, there are always a lot of different factors that control how good you will be, and I've taken us down a tangent there, when adding them all up I expect the team to be a tiny bit worse but with a likely range of something like 35-43 wins barring any shockers over the summer.
