"So far, we have proven we can beat anybody and lose to anybody." - Doc Rivers

 

Free Agent Cap Holds


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  An explanation of what this page is all about.

  A key to the "type" column thing.


Lists updated as of 22nd April 2013.






 
Player Previous salary Type Cap hold
Hilton Armstrong Minimum salary Min $854,389
Erick Dampier Minimum salary Min $854,389
Randolph Morris Minimum salary Min $854,389
Etan Thomas Minimum salary Min $854,389
 
 
Player Previous salary Type Cap hold
Carlos Arroyo Minimum salary Min $854,389
Dana Barros Minimum salary Min $854,389
P.J. Brown Minimum salary Min $854,389
Mark Bryant Minimum salary Min $854,389
Michael Finley Minimum salary Min $854,389
Nenad Krstic $5,543,116 150% $8,314,674
Grant Long Minimum salary Min $854,389
Stephon Marbury $1,200,000 120% $1,440,000
Roshown McLeod $1,509,001 250% $3,772,503
Michael Olowokandi Minimum salary Min $854,389
Shaquille O'Neal Minimum salary Min $854,389
Scot Pollard Minimum salary Min $854,389
 
 

None
 
 

None
 
 
Player Previous salary Type Cap hold
Brian Scalabrine Minimum salary Min $854,389
 
 
Player Previous salary Type Cap hold
Semih Erden Minimum salary Min $854,389
 
 

None
 
 
Player Previous salary Type Cap hold
Rudy Fernandez $2,180,443 250% $5,451,108
Wesley Person Minimum salary Min $854,389
 
 
Player Previous salary Type Cap hold
Vernon Macklin Minimum salary Min $762,195
Ben Wallace $2,246,400 190% $5,451,108
 
 

None
 
 
Player Previous salary Type Cap hold
Earl Boykins Minimum salary Min $854,389
 
 

None
 
 
Player Previous salary Type Cap hold
Bobby Simmons Minimum salary Min $854,389
 
 
Player Previous salary Type Cap hold
Horace Grant Minimum salary Min $854,389
Ron Harper $2,200,000 130% $2,860,000
Jim Jackson Minimum salary Min $854,389
Karl Malone $1,500,000 120% $1,800,000
Ira Newble Minimum salary Min $854,389
Theo Ratliff Minimum salary Min $854,389
Mitch Richmond Minimum salary Min $854,389
John Salley Minimum salary Min $854,389
Brian Shaw Minimum salary Min $854,389
Joe Smith Minimum salary Min $854,389
Shammond Williams $1,750,000 120% $2,100,000
 
 
Player Previous salary Type Cap hold
Gilbert Arenas Minimum salary Min $854,389
Lester Hudson Minimum salary Min $854,389
Steven Hunter $3,696,000 200% $7,022,400
Leon Powe Minimum salary Min $854,389
Marcus Williams Minimum salary Min $854,389
 
 

None
 
 

None
 
 

None
 
 

None
 
 
Player Previous salary Type Cap hold
Mike Bibby Minimum salary Min $854,389
Baron Davis Minimum salary Min $854,389
 
 

None
 
 
Player Previous salary Type Cap hold
Jeremy Richardson Minimum salary Min $854,389
 
 

None
 
 

None
 
 

None
 
 

None
 
 
Player Previous salary Type Cap hold
Robert Horry $3,630,000 190% $6,897,000
Glenn Robinson Minimum salary Min $854,389
Damon Stoudamire Minimum salary Min $854,389
Nick Van Exel Minimum salary Min $854,389
Jacque Vaughn Minimum salary Min $854,389
 
 

None
 
 
Player Previous salary Type Cap hold
Brevin Knight $2,000,000 130% $2,600,000
Greg Ostertag $4,850,000 130% $6,305,000
 
 
Player Previous salary Type Cap hold
Morris Almond Minimum salary Min $854,389
Maurice Evans Minimum salary Min $854,389
James Singleton Minimum salary Min $854,389
 
 


Question: What is a cap hold and why may I want to ask that?

Answer: Your team's free agents have what is called a "cap hold." This is an amount of money that is charged to your team's salary cap number, even though the player isn't under contract. This is a deliberate ploy that exists to close a loophole; if cap holds didn't exist, it's theoretically possible for a team to have its entire roster become free agents at the same time, have their entire cap to spend on other team's free agents, and then use Bird rights to re-sign their own ones afterwards. And that would be disingenuous. This way, your free agents eat into your cap room, forcing you to prioritise a bit better. And the players below have cap holds (also known as "free agent amounts") that have not yet been renounced, making them technically interesting. Technically.

If you waive a player, they are automatically renounced, and so will not have a cap hold. If a player signs with another NBA team, they also no longer have a cap hold to their former team. And if a player retires (by which I mean he properly retires, sending official retirement paperwork to league and everything, and not just informally saying that they've retired), then their free agent amount is removed too. However, players often don't formally retire until they're eligible for their NBA pension, and the reason for that (other than laziness) is that many of them still have cap holds with NBA teams, which means that they can still be incorporated into sign and trades as salary filler for trades. It would be an extremely impossible thing to imagine had it not already happened: at the 2007 trade deadline, Aaron McKie and Keith Van Horn were both signed and traded to complete deals while being unofficially retired, earning them 7 figures worth of free cheddar. And all they had to do was not file the retirement paperwork. It's implausible, but it happens. (Similarly, if a player's contract with an NBA team expires without him going through waivers, and he then signs with a non-NBA team, he will continue to have a cap hold until he's renounced.)

These cap holds can stick around for years if the team remains over the salary cap in that time. And, as you'll see below, they do. There's some players from the late 90's on here, for God's sake. However, when teams have set themelves up for cap room, they renounce these basically useless free agent amounts to maximize how much room they have. For example, in the summer of 2007, Milwaukee, Orlando and Memphis all figured to have cap room, and so they renounced all their free agents who weren't under contract. These included players from previous years; Orlando renounced Darko Milicic, Grant Hill, Andrew DeClercq, Stacey Augmon, Jaren Jackson, Mark Jones, Shawn Kemp, Sean Rooks, Bo Outlaw and Olumide Oyedeji; Milwaukee renounced Reece Gaines, Jermaine Jackson, Ervin Johnson, Toni Kukoc, Jiri Welsch, Ruben Patterson, Brian Skinner, Jared Reiner and Earl Boykins; and Memphis renounced Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, Junior Harrington, Lawrence Roberts, Mike Batiste, Antoine Carr, Kevin Edwards, Antonis Fotsis, Dahntay Jones, Will Solomon and Doug West. The randomness of those players should help illustrate the randomness of some of the players listed above, and why they're still here.

The cap hold that these free agents have varies, depending on how much the salary in the final year of their last NBA contract was; the cap hold is a percentage of that salary, and is also dependent on what kind of free agent rights the team has on that player. Listed in the "type" column is a brief description of the cap hold that that player has, and a fleshed out description of what those terms mean follows this colon:



250%: The player is a Larry Bird free agent, coming off of a rookie scale contract, and the last year of his previous contract was lesser than the average salary.

200%: The player is a Larry Bird free agent, coming off of a rookie scale contract, and the last year of his previous contract was greater than the average salary.

190%: The player is a Larry Bird free agent, NOT coming off of a rookie scale contract, and the last year of his previous contract was lesser than the average salary.

150%: The player is a Larry Bird free agent, NOT coming off of a rookie scale contract, and the last year of his previous contract was greater than the average salary.

130%: The player is an Early Bird free agent.

120%: The player is a non-Bird free agent.

Min: The player's previous salary was a minimum salary contract, and therefore so is their cap hold. Note that if the player has one year of experience, the second year minimum is used, but if the player has more experience than that, the third year minimum is used instead, even if they're like a 28 year veteran. This is due to the league's rebate policy thing that sees all players with two or more years experience signed to a one year (or rest of the year) minimum salary contract are charged to their team's salary cap as being only third year players, with the league making up the balance between that and their actual minimum salary, so as to not deter teams from signing older players just because they cost more.

Max: If the player had used the correct one of the percentages used above, their contract would have exceeded the maximum salary; therefore the maximum salary is used instead.

3rd year: The player is a free agent after only three seasons of their rookie contract, having had their fourth year option declined. Their cap hold becomes what the value of their fourth year option would have been. Note: such players are NOT eligible for restricted free agency,

2nd year: Same as 3rd year, but a year earlier (i.e. they had their third year option declined).

QO: The player is a restricted free agent, but NOT coming off of the rookie salary scale; their cap hold is for the value of their qualifying offer.

Offer sheet: The player currently has an offer sheet pending; if the first year's salary of that offer sheet is greater than the QO, then the value of the first year of the offer sheet is used as the cap hold.



All that information was taken from Larry Coon's CBA FAQ. Also go there if you don't know what "Bird" means.




2012/13 max salary cap figure: $58,044,000
2012/13 min salary cap figure: $49,337,400
2012/13 luxury tax threshold: $70,307,000

2012/13 Mid Level Exception figure: $5,000,000
2012/13 Mid Level Exception figure, tax payers: $3,090,000
2012/13 Mid Level Exception figure, cap roomers: $2,575,000

2012/13 maximum player salary, 0-6 years service: $13,668,750
2012/13 maximum player salary, 7-9 years service: $16,402,500
2012/13 maximum player salary, 10+ years service: $19,136,250
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