NBA Players’ Contracts under Latest Owners’ Offer

David Stern tried so hard to convince players to his latest offer that he even published a memo to the players with full explanation, or dare I say advertisement, of all important changes. I’ve read it and…
here’s my question: how would it really change NBA landscape?
What kind of differences would happen under those rules?
And which teams and players would be the most affected?

I didn’t want to use any semi-guessed projections how teams could look 3-4 years in the future so I’ve used actual NBA contracts. In other words, I assumed that EVERY current NBA contract was signed under new rules and I’ve changed every contract as it would have been signed under latest owners’ offer.

Obviously, it wouldn’t work that way but I think it’s a nice simulation about NBA rosters given those changes.

Here are the highlights:

[other than the fact it was a good exercise how NBA contracts work]

1) For most teams there would be only two differences

A couple of shorter by one year contracts and savings worth a couple of millions thanks to lower raises. It could make a real difference in some cases [like Joe Johnson’s] but it would have any effect in 2-to-4 years.
In all those shorter contracts and lower raises would be probably the most helpful to Magic’s roster.

2) Huge majority of bad contracts still would be signed

Obviously they would be a little less bad thanks to 1) but still if any GM wanted to overpay bench guy or pseudo-star, rules wouldn’t disallow him that opportunity.

3) The most affected teams would be

[in order of team’s city name]:

Denver Nuggets – their two rotation players [Harrington and Andersen] would either earn a lot less money or they would have to sign somewhere else. Also there’s a sizeable chance they would still have Carmelo.

LA Lakers – their core of Kobe, Gasol, Odom, Bynum would be the same but they would have to find some cheaper alternatives to play at PG and SF. Or players whom they signed [Artest, Blake, Barnes] would have to agree to significantly lower salaries.

Miami Heat – their window to win a championship would be 2 years shorter!
That’s because of a change regarding sign-and-trades rules.

New Orleans Hornets, New Jersey Nets, Orlando Magic – the same issue for all three of them:
thanks to a little tweak regarding player’s options either Dwight, Deron and Paul would sign shorter extensions or they wouldn’t be free agents until 2013.

New York Knicks – with Extension-and-trade prohibited Carmelo saga would look very differently.
Either he would have to wait until late August to sign his extension or trade with Nuggets wouldn’t happen and he would have to sign as a free agent.

Phoenix Suns and San Antonio Spurs – surprising amount of players would either earn a lot less money or they would have to sign somewhere else or in a different way than they did.

Washington Wizards – they would have a huge amount of cap space thanks to Rashard Lewis’ shorter contract. But there would also be a bad news about it: they would have to spend almost 30M$ to even reach new required minimum salary for a team!

4) The most affected players would be

Jermaine O’Neal, Matt Carroll, Al Harrington, Chris Andersen, David Lee, Ron Artest/Metta World Peace, Chris Bosh, LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Duhon, Marcin Gortat, Channing Frye, Gerald Wallace, Antonio McDyess, DeJuan Blair, Gary Neal and Rashard Lewis.

So pretty much only stars who wanted to change teams and a middle class. All of them would either earn a lot less money or they would have to sign somewhere else or would have to sign in a different way than they did.

You can check and examine all the numbers below… although please keep in mind that:

• I’ve used numbers from www.storytellerscontracts.com as a baseline so all marks are the same:
  (name) means free agent while [name] = rookie. You can find original file here,
• I didn’t even try to fill out rosters so some of them looks empty,
• I ignored most of the free agents [I included some of them just for fun and to show some new contracts],
• “-PO” means that player wouldn’t have his player option.

And now a very, very long table with all NBA players’ salaries had they been signed under latest owners’ offer.

 

Salary and contracts of NBA coaches

Have you ever wondered why information about coaches’ salaries in the NBA is so hard to find? I have.
Information about players’ salaries in the NBA is not only useful for fans but also they can be easily found in many, many, many places. The same can’t be said about coaches’ contracts and earnings!

I propose the open project for coaches’ contracts to create the most comprehensive and up to date database. In the last two days I spent way too many hours researching the hell out of google and this is what I’ve collected from last 11 seasons…

BTW, please remember about these notes:

• I do not have any inside information and I can’t guarantee accuracy any of these reports.
• All salaries are in millions of dollars.
• I don’t take into consideration future “Team Options” because it’s simply 1-year extension on a set scale.
• Right now I have 286 coaches’ salaries out of 379 possible but I hope thanks to you this list will grow…
• If you know any information behind “???” please let me know in the comments or via e-mail.
• All information provided by others can be found in the comments sections.
• “2013-14” season means either new contract which will take effect next year or simply next year of old one.
• The list is sorted descending by season and then ascending by city/team’s name.
• Some teams had more than one coach during given year so those teams show up more than once.
• I’ll update this post as often as needed/possible – LAST EDIT: 4 July 2013

Warning! Now it’s the time for long tables…