Bird Rights and salary cap holds

[Bill Bayno]

For full transparency, let us lay it all here. How would Bird Rights and salary cap holds work? Just like in the NBA Live Dynasty mode, do we sign FAs of other teams first before we sign our own FAs with BR so that the BR could be fully felt? If that's not necessary, how are cap holds computed as I learned from reading the CBA FAQ website, it is these cap holds that determine how much over the cap a team can get without getting penalized. In my understanding, it's not the WHOLE contract of the player with the BR that is exempted from the cap but just a part of it.

Now that BRs are in place, would we institute a luxury level aka a hard cap? I mean what prevents an NBAX team from doing a Boston or Golden State, building a roster with rookie contracts and BRs down the line, then that GM maxes/Derrick Rose's all those players? When the time comes, that team will have a payroll as high as the New York Yankees.

[Bill Bayno]

Apparently, I might be misunderstanding how cap holds work. Or maybe I do, but please clarify.

Using another source (not CBA FAQ): www.postingandtoasting.com/2018/6/11/17445658/the-2018-offseason-guide-to-the-knicks-salary-cap

The definition of Bird Rights is:

Full Bird Rights: This exception allows teams to exceed the cap in order to re-sign their own free agents, up to the player’s maximum salary. The player needs to be under contract for three or more years. These contracts can be up to five years in length, with raises up to 8% of the salary year-over-year based on the first season of the contract.

It does not mention anything of necessitating a cap hold. Or is there?

Cap Holds: Cap holds are placeholders for players the team is expected to sign in the future. For example, a team is expected to sign its unsigned first-round draft pick, so an amount is reserved for this signing in the form of a cap hold. A team $10 million below the cap with $4 million in cap holds has $6 million in cap space. A team $5 million under the cap with $6 million in cap holds is considered $1 million over the cap and must use exceptions to sign players. In order to remove cap holds to not have them count against the salary cap, teams must waive their rights (like Non-Bird Rights) to their pending free agents.

[Rick Carlisle]

ahh.. this was the post you were referring to Bill Bayno??

[Bill Bayno]

Yup.

[Richard Jefferson]

Yep..All BR have cap holds in NBA. BR is basically the advantage that you can go over the cap to sign the players. And the Cap Hold is a small disadvantage of having those rights. So the BR are"blocking" part of your cap space until you decide what do you want to do. If you wan to keep your player with BR, their Caphold is taking part of the available cap space to go after other players.

But of course  teams can rescind the BR and then also the cap hold goes away...so they have more room to offer in player in other teams.

I really like how the BR/Caphold system is implemented in D720 (and marked in the roster page). I hope here we could use same/similar system. I think only issue with BR is how to mark it. If you have a clear system for it, then for example trading BR and keeping track of it, and having Cap holds during offseaon is super easy to have. It just needs one time action of going through the contracts in roster page to mark the BR.

Example team roster from D720

imgur.com/a/taps00D

BR are marked with italics. Cap holds are marked with purple and are 125% of previous years salary.

Few examples:

• Team does not have DeRozan's BR in year 2018/19 but will get them in 2019/20 once he has been 3 years in the team.
• CP3 and DMC are both Unrestricted Free Agents.Team has their BR to resign them even by going over the cap. The salary shown is 125% of their previous salary. For CP3 for example salary was $24,268,959 in 2017/18 and now during off season the caphold is 125% of that. Once he re-signs the cap hold can be removed with the new contract salary
• Wayne Ellington was with 2 year minimum contract of $990,000. Next off season team won't have his BR
• Dewayne Dedmon is in last year of his 3 year deal. Team has his BR and next offseason his caphold would be $1,250,000
  
• QO offer of the RFA is their cap hold. The QO and BR could be rescinded if wanted (As suggested in the other thread also)
  
• MLE is also counting as Caphold.
  

Edit. Just as clarification. BR can be traded like in real NBA. If that team would now trade Dewayne Dedmon on the last year of his 3rd year deal. The new team would get his BR even if they only have them for one year.

[Bill Bayno]

To clarify. Does it mean that Paul's 30 million cap hold is deducted from the team cap so that that team can't use it to sign another player?

[Bill Bayno]

Follow up question. How can teams go over the cap when Paul's salary is already earmarked in the team cap?

When Durant signed with the Warriors in 2016, Golden State was below the cap. When he re-signed in 2018,  the Warriors are already over the cap and in luxury tax level, so it's immaterial what his cap hold is since GSW is way over the cap. Or is it because Golden State has Thompson's, Curry's, Green's, and Iguodala's (I think even Livingston) BR that's why Durant was able to re-sign even if the Warriors are technically over the cap? Or is it because GSW has Durant's Early Bird rights? Either way, the Dubs are able to keep six veteran contracts each in the eight-figure level. They must be doing something right other than just willing to pay the luxury tax to keep the core intact.

[Richard Jefferson]

Aug 15, 2018 8:49:15 GMT 8 Bill Bayno said:

To clarify. Does it mean that Paul's 30 million cap hold is deducted from the team cap so that that team can't use it to sign another player?

Yes. Both CP3 and DMC's cap hold is counting against cap. Total salaries of the team 130,391,367 is including both cap holds.

By rescinding CP3  $130,391,367 - $30,336,199 = $100,055,168 so team would be about 2million under the cap.

And by rescinding BR and caphold of DMC also they would be about 23 million under the salary cap and could offer that to any other free agent that money. So there are options.

In this case it might not sensible to renounce your star players BR. It's just better to resign them. But if you have 5 bench players on expiring contracts and all of them with 10 million cap hold, it first looks that you are capped out, but could actually open like 50million in space by renouncing them. And then offer 2 stars a max contract instead. Example offer. "I offer Harden 30million per year. If I win him, I'll open up the necessary cap space by renouncing player A, B and C bird rights"

[Richard Jefferson]

Aug 15, 2018 8:54:02 GMT 8 Bill Bayno said:

Follow up question. How can teams go over the cap when Paul's salary is already earmarked in the team cap?

When Durant signed with the Warriors in 2016, Golden State was below the cap. When he re-signed in 2018,  the Warriors are already over the cap and in luxury tax level, so it's immaterial what his cap hold is since GSW is way over the cap. Or is it because Golden State has Thompson's, Curry's, Green's, and Iguodala's (I think even Livingston) BR that's why Durant was able to re-sign even if the Warriors are technically over the cap? Or is it because GSW has Durant's Early Bird rights? Either way, the Dubs are able to keep six veteran contracts each in the eight-figure level. They must be doing something right other than just willing to pay the luxury tax to keep the core intact.

You can go over the cap, or stay over the cap. Doesn't matter, you can still offer. Once CP3 re-signs for 25million or 35. That new salary replaces the cap hold of the BR.

Yep. GSW had full normal Bird Rights of all their other core players. And KD re-signed with Early Bird Rights. Early bird rights are bit different animal. For sim leagues they are I think too complex to implement, but basically even after 2-year you get the early rights to offer the player deal that allows you to also go (or to stay) over the cap. But the Early Birds just limit the amount/years you can offer. So KD did like 1+1 for X% higher amount of what the first contract with GSW was. I think the offer they were allowed to give, was slightly less than what KD's absolute max offer is (what other team under the cap could make). So he took small discount for a year, and after that GSW could get his Full Bird Rights and could offer any deal they/KD wanted.

Once you are already over the cap and want to re-sign everyone it doesn't really matter what the cap holds are. Then you just pay what is needed and pay the luxury tax, which GSW is paying a LOT, even if Klay has still relatively cheap deal. They are now like 41 million over the cap already and if they re-sign Klay to a higher deal they are probably paying hundreds of millions of tax because of all the multiplying factors for staying many years over the luxury tax.

[Bill Bayno]

I think I'm getting the hang of it. Unless you're planning to sign a player with the max, it's more prudent to rescind his BR. Is this thinking correct?

Also, observing on how Van Exel was able to sign Cousins and my clarification with the league chairman, we do not have cap holds. Which makes things much easier

Because of that, I would like to roleplay in-sim Atlanta Hawks haha

[Richard Jefferson]

Aug 15, 2018 15:44:38 GMT 8 Bill Bayno said:

I think I'm getting the hang of it. Unless you're planning to sign a player with the max, it's more prudent to rescind his BR. Is this thinking correct?

Also, observing on how Van Exel was able to sign Cousins and my clarification with the league chairman, we do not have cap holds. Which makes things much easier

Because of that, I would like to roleplay in-sim Atlanta Hawks haha

Well not necessary. Sometimes it makes sense to just re-sign all your rotation players. Depends on situation. My point was just that if you have multiple guys with BR (and cap holds) it can give a lot more options. How to re-sign, who not, etc..

Not having the cap hold makes things easier for sure. You can first use all the space you have and then in the end just resign your own guy like Cousins with Bird Rights.

[Ben Wallace]

I like this conversation.so informative..this is my question if this cap holder and BR will be implemented how can you interpret here in this league. I know in your first example is all about real nba signings how about in this league can you give a sample?

And how can this rules be more simple so we can implement it without complexity.

[Deleted]

Aug 15, 2018 23:22:03 GMT 8 Ben Wallace said:

I like this conversation.so informative..this is my question if this cap holder and BR will be implemented how can you interpret here in this league. I know in your first example is all about real nba signings how about in this league can you give a sample?

And how can this rules be more simple so we can implement it without complexity.

It doesn’t need to be simpler, it’s already really simple.

[Richard Jefferson]

Aug 15, 2018 23:22:03 GMT 8 Ben Wallace said:

I like this conversation.so informative..this is my question if this cap holder and BR will be implemented how can you interpret here in this league. I know in your first example is all about real nba signings how about in this league can you give a sample?

And how can this rules be more simple so we can implement it without complexity.

There is a a big wall of text now with lot information (some that is not necessary for sim-leagues), but I think the rule itself can be very simple. I can try to write down some bullet points for the rule, so it could be voted on the poll also easily

[Richard Jefferson]

Ok. Here my suggestion to the rule. Hopefully it makes sense. The only thing that it really needs is to mark it properly on roster page. And that is some effort to go through at once. But it's one time work only. I think adding the cap hold for unrestricted free agents would be nice also, but that can be done afterwards, if league likes this definition of Bird Rights.

Bird Rights

A player that has been on the same contract for at least three seasons straight will get Bird rights. A team owning players Bird Rights can go (or stay) over salary cap when re-signing players.

Bird Rights for Unrestricted Free Agents

By having Bird Rights of their Unrestricted Free Agents, a team can go over the salary cap to offer a player new contract to re-sign, or to match any offer from another team. However regardless of the matching, the Unrestricted Free Agent can decide to leave the original team.

Bird Rights for Restricted Free Agents

By having Bird Rights of their Restricted Free Agents, a team can go over the salary cap to offer a player new contract to re-sign, or to match any offer from another team to keep the player.

Bird Rights trading
When a player is traded, his new team inherits his Bird rights. For example, if a player signs a three-year contract, plays two and a half seasons with that team, and is traded at the trade deadline in the third season, then his new team has full Bird rights following the third season.

Marking of Bird Rights on roster page

The year when player will get his Bird Rights are marked in the contract on roster page with italics.

Example - a Rookie will get their bird rights after 3rd season
DeAndre Ayton     $6,804,300     $7,969,100     $8,348,500     $10,519,110     $13,674,843

Example - a Veteran in the last season of the 3-year contract
Markieff Morris $8,600,000

[Chris Bosh]

That was a very informative. Thank you Mr. RJ.

[Deleted]

The best parts of Richard’s proposal:

- It’s actually SIMPLER than what is currently in place
- The system for marking and/or moving these BRs is very easy to maintain and one GM could be designated the dedicated Bird Rights keeper - having access to the Roster page to keep track of said BRs
- Would be extraordinarily easy to apply retroactively, which allows the league to maintain appropriate player value for expiring players or Rookie contracts that have gone at least three years

[Bill Bayno]

Doing a countback of which team a player finished his season is actually much easier since the team rosters are archived in the roster Google sheet. That's how I learned that Aldridge was on his BR season when I transferred from Charlotte to Indiana last summer. This is not to start an argument, but I'm just pointing out the convenience of presently-active NBAX rules (ie, BR can't be traded).

But since we are currently not using italics as a legend or reminder for something, maybe we can have BR traded moving forward with the players' BR years italicized. The only complications I can see are on players who signed to one team with three one-year contracts or a combination of two-year plus one-year contracts (eg, real-life Durant with GSW, two years + 1+1). This would require some diligent countbacking in the rosters Google sheet and an honesty/honor system in the event there happened to be an oversight.

---

I notice that Duncan/Jefferson did not include cap holds in his proposal. That said, I vote for no cap holds. This might be prone to abuse, but understanding cap holds as it is proved to be some work for me that even CBA FAQ's language can't paint a picture for me that I had to go through other sources. And only until it was explained in this thread that I have somewhat (although still not fully) comprehend how cap holds work.

For the sake of simplicity, no cap holds, please. I admit the CBA has cap holds in place for a reason, but we don't have accountants/lawyers in this league to keep track of things. That said, the in-sim Atlanta Hawks would be an interesting franchise moving forward in as much as it is now a walking social experiment on how BR would impact team composition moving forward. I guess that's the apprehension @maro and Ben Wallace have with the Hawks on why they don't want a human GM to take control of the squad, lest the new owner just trades away all of ATL's assets and do a drastic do-over.

---

Going back to the proposal, I would like to vote that italicized BR contracts be reflected starting the 2019-20 offseason. Retroactively italicizing BR contracts (those already signed) and implementing this new rule in the middle of the ongoing offseason would mess things up and just create confusion. And I have real-life examples of this happening. In organized leagues even. I would care to share them if one asks for them.

In addition, this would alleviate the conundrum bot team Atlanta Hawks presently have since ALL of their rookie contracts won't have BR attached to them because they were signed prior to the 2019-20 season.

---

One might ask why I posted this on the General Discussion forum instead of the Polls and Proposals forum. It's because it was more of me asking for clarification on how we will implement BR for this offseason rather than rocking the boat and suggesting something. Truth be told, I don't want to touch cap holds with a ten-foot stick, and if that apprehension has not been evident since the start of this thread, I don't know how to illustrate it more using words other than outright typing "I don't like it".

Now that it has evolved into a proper suggestion thread, I also suggest that this thread be moved to the proper forum.

---

Looking ahead, I have doubts on the BR rule being implemented as how Richard Jefferson proposed it. Basing it on my past proposals (salary floor, simulated two-way contracts vis-a-vis draft-and-stash) getting shot down, I can see this being thumbed down as well because it's "too much work". But hey, maybe you're the catalysts of change this league needed.

So, don't make it as if you new guys are being ganged up and bullied to submission because I also tried to suggest changes to this league. And some of us go way back before this league started. To paraphrase David Fizdale, "Take that for context."

[Deleted]

Aug 16, 2018 6:08:31 GMT 8 Bill Bayno said:

Doing a countback of which team a player finished his season is actually much easier since the team rosters are archived in the roster Google sheet. That's how I learned that Aldridge was on his BR season when I transferred from Charlotte to Indiana last summer. This is not to start an argument, but I'm just pointing out the convenience of presently-active NBAX rules (ie, BR can't be traded).

But since we are currently not using italics as a legend or reminder for something, maybe we can have BR traded moving forward with the players' BR years italicized. The only complications I can see are on players who signed to one team with three one-year contracts or a combination of two-year plus one-year contracts (eg, real-life Durant with GSW, two years + 1+1). This would require some diligent countbacking in the rosters Google sheet and an honesty/honor system in the event there happened to be an oversight.

---

I notice that Duncan/Jefferson did not include cap holds in his proposal. That said, I vote for no cap holds. This might be prone to abuse, but understanding cap holds as it is proved to be some work for me that even CBA FAQ's language can't paint a picture for me that I had to go through other sources. And only until it was explained in this thread that I have somewhat (although still not fully) comprehend how cap holds work.

For the sake of simplicity, no cap holds, please. I admit the CBA has cap holds in place for a reason, but we don't have accountants/lawyers in this league to keep track of things. That said, the in-sim Atlanta Hawks would be an interesting franchise moving forward in as much as it is now a walking social experiment on how BR would impact team composition moving forward. I guess that's the apprehension @maro and Ben Wallace have with the Hawks on why they don't want a human GM to take control of the squad, lest the new owner just trades away all of ATL's assets and do a drastic do-over.

---

Going back to the proposal, I would like to vote that italicized BR contracts be reflected starting the 2019-20 offseason. Retroactively italicizing BR contracts (those already signed) and implementing this new rule in the middle of the ongoing offseason would mess things up and just create confusion. And I have real-life examples of this happening. In organized leagues even. I would care to share them if one asks for them.

In addition, this would alleviate the conundrum bot team Atlanta Hawks presently have since ALL of their rookie contracts won't have BR attached to them because they were signed prior to the 2019-20 season.

---

One might ask why I posted this on the General Discussion forum instead of the Polls and Proposals forum. It's because it was more of me asking for clarification on how we will implement BR for this offseason rather than rocking the boat and suggesting something. Truth be told, I don't want to touch cap holds with a ten-foot stick, and if that apprehension has not been evident since the start of this thread, I don't know how to illustrate it more using words other than outright typing "I don't like it".

Now that it has evolved into a proper suggestion thread, I also suggest that this thread be moved to the proper forum.

---

Looking ahead, I have doubts on the BR rule being implemented as how Richard Jefferson proposed it. Basing it on my past proposals (salary floor, simulated two-way contracts vis-a-vis draft-and-stash) getting shot down, I can see this being thumbed down as well because it's "too much work". But hey, maybe you're the catalysts of change this league needed.

So, don't make it as if you new guys are being ganged up and bullied to submission because I also tried to suggest changes to this league. And some of us go way back before this league started. To paraphrase David Fizdale, "Take that for context."

I never cared about being treated badly because I was a newcomer, I cared that the management of the league don’t seem to have a single issue with lazy management and shutting down any ideas that aren’t their’s regardless of ease of implementation. It’s frustrating to be given no voice except “make a thread that will garner some discussion but ultimately get ignored” when you know the league could stand to be dramatically better and the time and effort necessary to get it there would be minimal.

[Ben Wallace]

Don't worry i'm more interested in this proposal than in the previous proposal what i need is simplicity, we don't need to complicate anything if there is a simple way we will use the simpliest way.

Hey man we are not shuting down of all of your proposal, every night me and @maro talk and chat at fb regarding this league and how to improve it. Just relax we will do our best to hear all of your voice but be nice specially to the chairman.