Lakers Salary Cap / CBA Q&A (please see pg 17 for 2024 offseason projections)

[mad55557777]

[gng930]

Yeah my feeling is that they have foregone any potential 2024 reset with Lebron/AD not yet committed either way; at least it's apparent to me with all the player options they granted. They're likely to be a cap-space team in summer 2025 though and thus likely out of luxury tax territory. They need at least one non-tax year out of this one or the next to reset the repeater tax:

1. 2023-2024: Borderline tax team
2. 2024-2025: Potential tax team (namely dependent on Lebron staying or going)
3. 2025-2026: Cap-space team (max FA or two?) with no major raises due, likely to avoid the tax
4. 2026-2027: Austin and maybe Rui potentially due for a raise, high probability they will be a tax team depending on what they do with the cap-space during the prior year
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Luxury Tax/FA Spreadsheet (Save to your Google Drive to edit)

[vasashi17+]

Heard we could be in the repeater tax this year…how could we possibly duck it this year to set ourselves for a full reset on the repeater tax if we also somehow duck it for the 2024/25 season as well?

Recall that the more punitive tax bands will come into effect by the 2025/26 season. So most tax averse teams would want to be nowhere near repeater tax territory by then. That gives the Lakers the next 2 seasons to do a full reset to their current repeater tax offender status. You are classified a repeat tax offender if in the previous 4 season window, you’ve been a taxpayer in at least 3 of those seasons.

So hypothetically, if we duck the tax bill this season, we would still be classified a repeat tax offender for the 2024/25 season if we somehow land in tax territory at the end of that season.

2019/20: non taxpayer
2020/21: taxpayer
2021/22: taxpayer
2022/23: taxpayer
2023/24: repeat offender status, but soft reset if no tax bill
2024/25: still considered repeat offender, but can do a full reset to status by once again ducking the tax bill
2025/26: first season where more punitive tax bands come into play

[Aeneas Hunter]

[gng930]

Can't you also avoid the tax by trading away a minimum player at the deadline and then signing an RoS contract in the buyout market? 2+ million out, ~650K in by my calculations. Maybe there's even enough room to use some pro-rated amount of that remaining ntpMLE for the RoS?
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Luxury Tax/FA Spreadsheet (Save to your Google Drive to edit)

[vasashi17+]

^Yep @AH, it’s terrible strategy to hopscotch thru the season and I hope that ain’t the plan, especially with Bron/AD both coming off leg injuries last season 😜

@G, your scenario works too! My scenario was given in case those “unlikely” DLo/Vando incentives convert and end up hitting our books. I just wanted to demonstrate a scenario where those dudes ain’t salary dumped and remain on the roster, yet we have enough wiggle in case their incentives do end up becoming “likely”.

Either way it’s gonna be close and I anticipate we do end up dumping some salary at some point during the season.
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[vasashi17+]

No 🧢, it’s time to know cap…

The new cap king Coon version of the CBA bible will be released some time before late October.

[vasashi17+]

As of Sept 5 2023, roster stands as:

1. Bron 47.61m
2. AD 40.6m
3. DLo 17.31m
4. Rui 15.74m
5. Reaves 12.02m
6. Gabe 10.5m
7. Vando 4.7m
8. Prince 4.52m
9. JHS 3.7m
10. Wood 2.71m
11. Cam 2.17m
12. Hayes 2.17m
13. MaxC 1.72m
14. MLewis 1.12m
•Two-way: Castleton, Hodge, Fudge $0
•Partial MLE remaining: 1.9m (potential 4yr 8.2m deal)
•4 minimum TPEs remaining varying from 1.8m - 2.7m expiring on 2/9/24
= 166.56m (1.27m breach past the 165.29m tax line leading to a 3.17m repeater tax bill); CWood’s minimum deal counts as a 2.71m tax hit since he is a 7 year seasoned vet and has a player option like Cam & Hayes leading to them not counting as 2m cap hits instead (ie 2 year seasoned vet mins).
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[mad55557777]

^i can totally see a move in season to get under and reset the tax.

[vasashi17+]

@mad: totally agree with you bro! Also to take into consideration is that DLo & Vando’s “unlikely” incentives could turn “likely” by the end of the year. In that case, that’s an additional 845k to consider towards team salary. If they remain as is, the tax bill would then be 5.3m (reflecting the 2.12m in breach of the tax line).

I’m thinking Vando’s 4.7m gets moved for a vet min deal (~2m) closer to the trade deadline. Then depending on how much wiggle we have at that point, they could turn to the prorated remaining MLE to poach a buyout candidate for the remainder of the season.

Of course, a bigger move involving larger salary could also be at play with the baked in NTC in the DLo 1+1 reup being negotiated out. Unlike a potential Vando trade that could happen right now, a DLo trade has to wait till Dec 15th.
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[mad55557777]

[gng930]

Didn't realize Wood's cap hit would be higher but yeah that PO really throws things off. I'm not sure they can get under the tax at this point without trading a non-min player like Vando or Prince. And that is without even considering the unlikely incentives for DLO and Vando that's been cited. Can they still deal out one of Reddish/Hayes and then play hop-scotch with 10-days and maybe an RoS to avoid that tax?

If the deadline is 60 days before the end of the season like it was last season and you have a 14-day reprieve from the 14-player requirement, that means you have to sign five 10-day contracts. Last year the minimum was over 60K (for a rookie) so you figure over 65K this year. I'm not sure if they automatically assign a 2-year vet cap hit though like they do for UFDAs. And you have to account for the last-day RoS contract(s) ala Tristan/Harrison they will probably want to sign to field 15 going in to the playoffs.

It seems like the nuclear option may be, short of Wood being a disaster, to just try and dump both Reddish and Hayes before the deadline. That should free them up to even use the rest of that prorated MLE on a buyout player.
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Luxury Tax/FA Spreadsheet (Save to your Google Drive to edit)

[dcarter4kobe]

Does anyone know DLo or Vando incentives?

I believe the most likely scenario is Hayes or Reddish being salary dumped at the deadline along with cash to get under the cap. Would also have enough wiggle room to add 2 prorated vet min players as the season progresses. Dumping just 1 of them would allow the Lakers to get 900K under the tax. Enough to sign one replacement player at deadline and the 15th guy closer to the end of the regular season

*dependent on those incentives
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"He's a Zen master, so he can speak to you, and he doesn't need a microphone; you can hear him in your head, 'Ron, don't shoot, don't shoot.' Whatever, pow, three. I love the Zen, though."

[dcarter4kobe]

Also the fact that we are so close to tax will forever confuse me on the Rui overpay by 2-3M a year. There wasnt a market at all. PJ Washington the much better player so far, only got 3y/46.5M
_________________
"He's a Zen master, so he can speak to you, and he doesn't need a microphone; you can hear him in your head, 'Ron, don't shoot, don't shoot.' Whatever, pow, three. I love the Zen, though."

[vasashi17+]

@dc4k: yeah, I’m not understanding how they didn’t thread the needle more precisely since the bulk of the team cap was done in-house & you’d think they had a safe projection on how much it would take to still be under the tax line after they went out-house with other FAs, considering they knew they only had the ntpMLE (with Gabe not even getting the full exception amount), BAE and vet mins to hand out in that regard and those amounts were generally known even with the new CBA & cap projections not entirely specific with the figures yet.

Either way, based on Spotrac, we are currently 1.265m above the tax line and when you consider the “unlikely” 845k in incentives towards DLo & Vando, we’d have to offload marginally more than 2.11m to safely stay under the tax…if such a move still keeps us at a rostered 14.

However as you suggested, simply dumping either Cam or Hayes 2.165m at the trade deadline will not get it done since the prorated Rest-of-Season (RoS) vet min is based off the 2+ seasoned veteran amount of 2.02m and if we roster a 14th to a RoS deal after dumping Cam or Hayes then that puts us right in danger of breaching the tax line again, since that prorated amount would come out to roughly 766k if the player was signed a day after the trade deadline.

They would have to do a complicated rope-a-dope cycle of 2 weeks off and a 10-day contract signed in between each biweekly interval till the season ended. Which 10-day dopeS could we find to rope-in in pulling off such a scheme? And that’s dopeS as in plural since we can’t sign 1 dope, uh dude to more than 2 10-day deals for the season. Either way, I’m sure there aren’t many out there that we could find, which is why imho that may not be the wisest way to stay under the tax line either.

As for the “unlikely” incentives, nothing has been reported on in terms of DLo’s. We know it’s 700k for each of the season in his deal and if they are performing based, then he obviously didn’t attain that baseline last year, which is why they classified as “unlikely”. I’m assuming it’s highly likely that it has something to do with defensive metrics haha.

As for Vando, he’s got both “likely” (58k) & “unlikely” (145k) incentives in his deal this year. We don’t know the specifics to his “likely” incentives, but we do know his “unlikely” incentives are based off of dreb%. Considering that they are still “unlikely” and he got 15.3% of drebs last season, I’m assuming the incentives turn “likely” off a higher %age.

Hope that answers it for you, but I’d be remiss to not state that I’m no fan of ducking the tax bill. I had hoped they conducted business this summer with just a last ditch effort of Bron/AD led championship in mind and not having to budget that goal.
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[dcarter4kobe]

Have never been a fan of ducking the tax either. But as we both have stated it doesnt make sense to stay over by a mill or 2. Especially when it's a soft reset. If a trade is there where we have to increase salary to get better I hope we don't think twice.

Seeing that the incentives are unlikely and they didnt reach them last season with less depth on the roster, I'm going to assume they don't reach the incentives.

Dumping Cam or Hayes at the deadline (2/8) would put us at about 899K under the tax and 13 players. If we wait the max 2 weeks to sign a guy, it would be about 25 games left on 02/22 (50 Days remaining). Pro rated vet min is about 25K a game or 124K per 10 Day (roughly). That would be about a 625K payroll hit for the 14th guy. Leaving about 270K left for the 15th roster spot (Can wait until last day of season again or about 2 10 Day contracts)
_________________
"He's a Zen master, so he can speak to you, and he doesn't need a microphone; you can hear him in your head, 'Ron, don't shoot, don't shoot.' Whatever, pow, three. I love the Zen, though."

[vasashi17+]

I know it’s an extremely premature outlook for the 2024 offseason, but let’s say we decide to keep running it back with this team, what could our cap sheet look like next summer?

If cap climbs another max 10%, then next year the projected…
Salary cap: 149.6m
Tax line: 181.8m
1st Apron: 189.5m
2nd Apron: 201.1m

1. Bron 51.4m (player opt in)
2. AD 43.2m
3. Rui 17m
4. Reavus 13m
5. Gabe 11m
6. Vando 10.7m
7. JHS 3.9m
8. MaxL 1.9m
= 152m team salary

All vet guys & DLo opt out of their player options & let’s assume NO defers the ‘24 FRP to the following year…

9. DLo modest re-up ~25m
10. MaxC max re-up ~12m
11. ‘24 FRP assumed to be around #20-30 ~3.5m
12. Our 2nd 1.23m
13. clips SRP 1.23m
= 195m team salary

14. tpMLE 5.5m (Wood or Hayes via hard cap triggering MLE or Prince via non hard cap triggering nonbird 120% raise…if we bypass the use of MLE, we can re-up DLo to a higher annual and add a 15th vet min guy without worrying about a 2nd Apron hardcap breach)
= 200.5m total team salary w/ ~600k wiggle till 2nd Apron hardcap if it is triggered

However if the hardcap is not triggered, we can offer DLo his true max annual as long as we’re willing to pay a repeater tax premium on him as a result. For reference, let’s say we are willing to spend on team salary up till the 2nd Apron hardcap, then team salary would be projected to be roughly 20m above the tax line, in which case the repeater tax bill on that amount would be about 65m.
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[vasashi17+]

[vasashi17+]

Quick Primer on trade semantics before #tradeSZN

Recall that signing another team’s FAs makes them trade eligible in mid Dec, while signing our own FAs to larger than 120% raise from their previous annual makes them BYC and eligible to trade in mid Jan. It’s that concept of a BYC triggering raise that distinguished DLo from Rui & Reaves when it comes to trade eligibility for our own re-upped FAs. Also if an extension is signed that is outside the conditions of an extend-and-trade format (ie can only be 3 years in length including current season with up to 5% annual raises), then a 6 month NTC clock begins once ink hits paper.

Players that can be traded/aggregated…

Right now: Bron, JHS, MaxC & MaxL
On Dec 15th: DLo, Gabe, Prince, Wood, Cam & Hayes
On Jan 15th: Rui & Reaves
On Feb 4th: AD (signed extension on Aug 6th)
That can’t be traded by the Feb 8th trade deadline: Vando (signed extension on Sept 15th)

Also I like the idea of an evaluation period, cause if there’s any time to pull the trigger, it’s this season. Starting next season, teams that are projected to be 2nd Apron teams cannot trade aggregate, cannot use a trade multiplier to absorb larger incoming salary, cannot conduct S&ts, cannot involve cash in trades, cannot involve FRPs in trades unless they consent to their distant pick being “frozen” at the bottom of the draft order, etc.
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[SGSD32]

Hope this isn't too dumb a question on here.

Just thinking about next season.. If Wood has an excellent season.. relatively.. and would take a mid-level exception contract... the full one.. the Lakers would just have to be under the first apron, right?

[vasashi17+]

@SGSD: 👍🏼 Yep, you’re correct. Btw, the only dumb questions are those that ain’t asked 😉 haha

Also, if you want to know the scenarios that trigger the aprons, here they are…

[SGSD32]

[vasashi17+]

Yall should already be familiar 😉…but since it’s tradeSZN, here’s a pretty decent breakdown on where we stand on trades…

[vasashi17+]

Expansion teams coming in 2025?

[vasashi17+]

Uh-oh…so current cap projections ain’t looking to climb the full 10% next year (aka 149.6m)…Silver needs to get a new multi-billion TV deal stat, cause the cap might be flat-lining soon.