FanPost

The Timing of the Bargnani Trade Could've Killed It

I believe many sports writers are ignoring some CBA rules with their suggestions that the Andrea Bargnani to NY trade can be simply fixed to go through.

Bargnani’s contract goes from $11 mil to $12 mil (not counting the trade kicker, which I’m sure he’d waive if it made the difference between this deal going through or not).

Camby’s contract goes $4.59 mil to $3.38 mil

Novak’s contract goes from $4.05 mil to $3.75 mil

Add Novak and Camby’s deals and you get $7.13 mil, with the 125% rule… we can take back slightly more than $8.91 mil (Way short of Bargnani’s $12 mil). It would take a sign and trade of one our guys to add up to enough outgoing salary… the problem is I’m pretty sure we can’t sign and trade anyone except maybe JR (which even then, I don’t think we could get players back).

See it worked before because Camby and Novak’s deal added up $8.65 mil and with the 125% rule that’s $10.81 mil (which I’m pretty is close enough, because there’s like a +$150k or $250k rule IIRC).

Long story short: it can’t happen without some weird cap move that I don’t see.

*All these contract numbers are from Hoopshype, so I'm working according to their data. If my #s are off, it's because of their false #s.

And if you want make the Knicks send out enough money to take Bargnani back, you'd think to do a sign and trade. However who could you sign and trade to make up the difference?

There is no one you can send to Toronto to make it work... First you think: Pablo and Kenyon (you might as well add Cope just to prove my point) (coming from Marc Stein), but we don’t have either’s bird rights. I mean if we can’t sign them to more than the 120% raise ourselves without using the mini-MLE, how would we sign and trade them? You can’t sign and trade players using the mini-MLE/MLE. Not to mention, even if we could, the player would have to consent to such a sign and trade. I highly doubt any of them would consent to sign and trade on a slightly above minimum contract to Toronto.

If you want to make the sign and traded player either Richardson or Barron who might be happy to take the minimum contract, it might work. However, I don’t think that would be enough unless it was both of them, at least according to Hoopshype’s contract numbers.

EDIT: I just checked ShamSports for new contract #s, Novak's is the same, but Camby and Bargnani's are a little higher.

Camby's is actually $4.83 mil, while Novak's is still $3.75 mil. Bargnani's is $10.75 according to them, which makes a huge difference. So using these new numbers, the Knicks are sending out $8.58 mil (with the 125% rule, that equates to $10.725 mil)... which means, using ShamSports.com's contract #s, the trade will actually be legal without any other players. Now of course we don't know which site is right, if either of them even are.