Salary Cap for Dummies.

[SoCalSpursFan]

Hey-

I am a huge spurs fan, don't get me wrong, but I honestly have never really understood the salary cap and what it means to the Spurs. I mean I have the general idea but a lot of this cap talk I feel left out of (aka stupid) and I would guess some other people might be with me here...hopefully. Could someone maybe explain the Spurs salary cap (or NBA salary cap situation) in broken down/simple/moronic terms? This seems to be the side of sports I know nothing about, normally I stick to the stuff you might be asked on "Stump the Schwab"...

There may already be a thread like this...and if there is, sorry, and I'll be happy to get the link...

Thanks.

-Rich

[Kori Ellis]

Every year the salary cap is set and teams cannot sign free agents if the total team salary is over that amount (this season it's 53M) unless they have "exceptions" to use. There's various kind of exceptions -- Mid-Level Exception (MLE) which every team that's over the cap gets (this year MLE = 5.3M), Lower-Level Exception (LLE) which each team can use every other season (this year LLE = 1.74M), Larry Bird Exception (if you have a player's Bird's Rights you can use this exception to sign them even though you are over the cap), etc.

After the salary cap, there's a Luxury Tax threshhold (this year it's 65M). If your team goes over that threshhold, you have to pay a dollar for dollar tax.

Currently, the Spurs have 60M in committed salary. Therefore they are already over the salary cap. They have the LLE and MLE available to use, but if they use them both they'll be over the luxury tax threshhold.

If you want to read everything in detail about the salary cap, go here.

http://members.cox.net/lmcoon/salarycap.htm

It explains it all better than I can.

[J.T.]

Basically, the league has a salary cap so that the teams with more money can't give themselves an unfair advantage by whoring their money out to other players. The cap for next season is around 53M. If the team is under the cap, they can make bigger offers to FAs and so forth. If they're over the cap, they can still sign players using several exceptions (this is the MLE you hear us all talking about).

[SoCalSpursFan]

Every year the salary cap is set and teams cannot sign free agents if the total team salary is over that amount (this season it's 53M) unless they have "exceptions" to use. There's various kind of exceptions -- Mid-Level Exception (MLE) which every team that's over the cap gets (this year MLE = 5.3M), Lower-Level Exception (LLE) which each team can use every other season (this year LLE = 1.74M), Larry Bird Exception (if you have a player's Bird's Rights you can use this exception to sign them even though you are over the cap), etc.

After the salary cap, there's a Luxury Tax threshhold (this year it's 65M). If your team goes over that threshhold, you have to pay a dollar for dollar tax.

Currently, the Spurs have 60M in committed salary. Therefore they are already over the salary cap. They have the LLE and MLE available to use, but if they use them both they'll be over the luxury tax threshhold.

If you want to read everything in detail about the salary cap, go here.

http://members.cox.net/lmcoon/salarycap.htm

It explains it all better than I can.

Thanks Kori

[Bruno]

If you don't understand a term this link is quite good too :
http://members.cox.net/lmcoon/quickref.htm

[Kamnik]

thx for the explanation

i didnt understand everything too

much better now

[Obstructed_View]

It explains it all better than I can.

No, that was about as good a nuts explanation as there is.