A few days ago on the altraps forum, Scott pointed out this article regarding the rather unprecedented (at least under the current CBA, as well as its immediate predecessors) hold-outs of two Cavs restricted free agents: noted Slobodan Milosevic fan Sasha Pavlovic and noted gay community icon Anderson Varejao:
The summers of 2004, 2005 and 2006 featured record spending in the NBA. Part of it was due to a new collective bargaining agreement in 2005 that bolstered the salary cap.Lots of max contracts were given out, numerous teams had, and used, giant amounts of cap space; lots of teams used their entire mid-level exceptions to sign mid-level players to contracts worth more than $35 million; and lots of restricted free agents got huge deals without having to get legitimate offers elsewhere.
That was the flow, now is the ebb.
(The article also points out that the Raptors were the only team in the NBA this summer to use their full mid-level exemption to lure a player away from another team -- the frankly somewhat bizarre signing of Jason Kapono. This is actually not entirely accurate, as the capped-out Bulls used nearly all of theirs in the understandable but certainly no less painful signing of Joe Smith.)
I've long argued that it's these mid-level deals and not the obviously bloated max-contracts to unworthy players that destroy a team's cap flexibility. Never in their Clipper careers will Cuttino Mobley or the Talented Tim Thomas be their team's highest paid player, but the Clips will be on the hook for a combined $14 million dollars for their dubious services for each of the next three seasons. Look around the league and you see a lot of toxic tandems like this, from Vlad Radmanovic and Kwame Brown for Lakers (nearly $15 million this season) to Kenny Thomas and Shareef Abdur-Rahim for the Kings ($13 million escalating up to $15 million over the next three years).
Of course, the master of the pointless mid-level exemption is still Kevin McHale of the Minnesota Timberwolves. Prior to this summer's firesale, the Wolves were on the hook for past MLE-like duds like rap superstar Troy Hudson ($6.5 million on average over the next three years), Marko Jaric ($6 escalating to $7.5 million over the next four years) and Mike James (an average of $6.5 million over the next three years). Note that all three of them were point guards, and none have ever been good enough to start for anything resembling a playoff team. Dumping Kevin Garnett this summer was a useful distraction from the fact that the team is still on the hook for $18 million dollars for useless scrubs.
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