Excuse me for a few hundred words while I get a little bit nerdy on the salary cap. I don’t claim to be any sort of a “cap expert” but I do enjoy the inner workings of the complexity of the salary cap.
While the NBA has a salary cap, it isn’t a “hard cap” like that of the NFL (meaning the teams can’t exceed the cap for any reason), but rather the NBA has a “soft cap” (teams can exceed the salary cap in certain situations, although exceeding it too far results in serious consequences). If you want to learn more about the NBA’s salary cap, Larry Coon does an excellent job answering a few frequently asked questions.
I’ll start with a few basics. The NBA’s salary cap is projected to be around $67 million next season, with a tax level of $81 million (if a team exceeds the luxury tax, they are forced to pay a penalty fee). The Thunder have 13 players that are guaranteed for next season, and two players (Enes Kanter and Kyle Singler) that are restricted free agents (the team has the ability to match any offer the restricted free agent signs so long as they offer the free agent a qualifying offer).
The maximum allowable players on a roster is 15, and Oklahoma City has two guaranteed draft picks, as well as Josh Huestis (a first-rounder from last year that went unsigned and spent the year in the developmental league for the Thunder) for a total of 16 players before Kanter and Singler.
The possible options for the Thunder are as follows. First of all, they could select a foreign player that will choose to remain overseas for this year. Second, the team convinces Huestis to spend another year in the developmental league, although part of the alleged deal in drafting him in the first round in 2014 was that he would be on the team this season. Lastly (and most probable), the team could trade a few players to make room for Kanter, Singler and any other additions they wish to make to their team.
I’m not going to address the possibilities with the draft as I did a week’s worth of posts addressing the Thunder’s draft needs that you can (and should) go read about. I’m just going to give a view of the money the team will have to spend in the summer, as well as possibilities in circumventing the salary cap.
The Thunder’s salary looks like this next season*:
The Thunder will begin the summer over the salary cap this summer meaning they cannot sign any free agents out of their salary cap money (although there are other ways to sign players, more on this later). The Thunder would be about $3 million under the luxury tax, but because of something called a “cap hold” they’ll actually fall into the tax.
More from Thunderous Intentions
- Stealing one player from every Southwest Division team for the OKC Thunder
- Should the OKC Thunder chase after a disgruntled hometown hero?
- 3 OKC Thunder players who can step up in Aleksej Pokusevski’s absence
- Aleksej Pokusevski sidelined approximately 6 weeks with ankle injury
- Damian Lillard does not fit with the OKC Thunder
A cap hold is something that prevents teams from signing free agents with any available money and then signing their own free agents using the “Bird rights” (an exception that allows teams to exceed the salary cap to sign their own free agents so long as the player has played three seasons for the team, or was traded without signing a new contract).
With the cap holds to Kanter, Singler and the 14th pick in the draft, this is what the Thunder’s salary situation really looks like for the summer:
The Thunder will have a little over $94 million on the books for the summer (about $13 million over the tax level), but they will have to trade a player (or a couple of players) in order for the 14th pick to be on the active roster.
The money leaves little opportunities for the Thunder to improve their roster through free agency, but there is something called the mid-level exception. There are a few types of the mid-level exception, and the one the Thunder will be eligible for is the tax payer mid-level exception which allows the team to sign a player (or combination of players) for a salary starting at about $3.4 million for the 2015 season for a maximum of three years. Players that made between $3-$4 million this season include Anthony Morrow, Mike Dunleavy, Matt Barnes, Mo Williams, Vince Carter and a number of similar players.
The Thunder might not have the most money to work with in free agency this summer, but with a core of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, Serge Ibaka, the 14th pick in the draft and a stable of young big men, spending money might not be the most important thing for the team.
In a season where every sentence about the Thunder will begin with “what if”, the most important thing is for general manager Sam Presti and company to use the resources available to put the team in the best position to win as many games as possible during the regular season, and to advance as far as possible in the playoffs.
If the team fails to live up to expectations (whether they are realistic or not), this time next year could be one of the most strenuous in the team’s short history.
*All salary information is from basketballinsiders.com.