Salary Cap wizards: Explain Kevin Love to Cavs

[celticsclay]

So it is obviously a very popular idea on these forums that Love would now go to Cleveland.
I was looking at Salary figures, which I am far from an expert at and trying to make some sense of it.

Edit starting in 2015-16
 Irving will be making 19 million (7 coming season)
Lebron Will be making 20
Kevin Love would be for 20 million max (15 for coming season).

The Cavs also have Waiters, Bennett, Thompson, Wiggins all under contract next year for between 4 and 5.5 a year. Are they planning on trading all of those guys to get Love?

I tried to look for hypothetical trades on the web for cavs for love, but haven't seen any with salaries or actual offers. It really seemed like we learned from the breakup of the current heat that you can't really have 3 max level players and field a reasonable team around them (they all needed to take a paycut for them to be able to even sign a reasonable 4th player). With Lebron and Irving locked in at Max, how would adding Love not create the same problem?

[LooseCannon]

Kevin Love is set to make $15.72m next season.  Assuming that acquiring him does not put the Cavs into luxury tax territory, they need to send out at least $10.72m in salaries in a trade.

If they get Love, they would obtain his Bird rights, so could pay him the maximum when he becomes a free agent.

[celticsclay]

Well.. this is more feasible for 2014-15 obviously because Irvings extensions and Love's will not have set in. I should have been more specific in asking beyond this season.

Basically in 2015-2016 they would have 3 players under contract for 61 million combined. This is more than the Heat's big 3 were making. If they keep at least 2 out of Waiters, Thompson, BennetT and Wiggins they would be over 70.

Does this mean they have no exceptions to use, have to fill the entire remaining 7 spots with veterans minimums and have to lose Varejo?

[Roy H.]

Well.. this is more feasible for 2014-15 obviously because Irvings extensions and Love's will not have set in. I should have been more specific in asking beyond this season.

Basically in 2015-2016 they would have 3 players under contract for 61 million combined. This is more than the Heat's big 3 were making. If they keep at least 2 out of Waiters, Thompson, BennetT and Wiggins they would be over 70.

Does this mean they have no exceptions to use, have to fill the entire remaining 7 spots with veterans minimums and have to lose Varejo?

They're allowed to go over the luxury tax line.  Their ability to add salary is restricted, in that they'd only have various forms of "Bird rights", the "taxpayer's MLE", and veteran minimum contracts.  Additionally, they are trading for Brendan Haywood, I believe, who has a large non-guaranteed contract for next year.  His salary could potentially be traded to another team for a high salaried player.

[celticsclay]

Well.. this is more feasible for 2014-15 obviously because Irvings extensions and Love's will not have set in. I should have been more specific in asking beyond this season.

Basically in 2015-2016 they would have 3 players under contract for 61 million combined. This is more than the Heat's big 3 were making. If they keep at least 2 out of Waiters, Thompson, BennetT and Wiggins they would be over 70.

Does this mean they have no exceptions to use, have to fill the entire remaining 7 spots with veterans minimums and have to lose Varejo?

They're allowed to go over the luxury tax line.  Their ability to add salary is restricted, in that they'd only have various forms of "Bird rights", the "taxpayer's MLE", and veteran minimum contracts.  Additionally, they are trading for Brendan Haywood, I believe, who has a large non-guaranteed contract for next year.  His salary could potentially be traded to another team for a high salaried player.

It looks like Haywood's salary is only 2 million for 2014-2015 then jumps to 10 million in 2015-2016. So they would have to really attract some sweeteners to get anything back of value for him and probably can't trade him this year?

[LooseCannon]

The early projection is that the salary cap will be $66.5m in 2015-2016 and the luxury tax threshold will be about $81m.  They may have traded their 2016 pick to Boston, but they have extra protected firsts from Memphis and Miami that can come as early as 2015.  Depending on other roster moves, they might be able to use the full MLE.

Haywood's last season is fully unguaranteed for 2015-2016 if not waived before August...something.  They're probably better of keeping him so that they can trade him to a team that plans on waiving him.  Sending Heywood and picks out in a sign and trade makes sense.

[LarBrd33]

Kyrie's extension doesn't kick in until next year.  He's still on his rookie contract his year.

Trading for Love is a piece of cake.

They still have like 9 million in cap space after signing LeBron.  They haven't signed Wiggins yet.  They just have to make up the difference between 15.7 mil (love's number) and 9 mil (their cap space)...  so like... Bennett + Wiggins + delladova + felix for Love works fine.

Or they need to take back Kevin Martin's contract as well, they just trade Thompson/Bennett/Waiters + Wiggins for Love/Martin... an absolute heist for the Wolves, but gotta do what you gotta do... Cavs will win 140 games next year.