NBA salary caps brings about whole new game

AMERICA AT LARGE:Teams now employ a "capologist" to interpret implications of complex NBA cap rules

THOSE WELL-INTENTIONED sorts who have argued that the implementation of a salary cap is necessary to restore common sense and bring economic stability to sports like soccer should be forced to monitor events in the wonderful world of professional basketball today.

The Super Bowl has been over for less than two weeks, the pitchers and catchers have already begun trickling in to Major League Baseball’s spring training sites in Florida and Arizona, the Winter Olympics are in full swing just across the border in Vancouver, but for a 24-hour period expiring at 3pm this evening (8pm Irish time), American sports fans and clubhouse lawyers will be fixated on the National Basketball Association’s trading deadline.

As is the case with most sports, there will be a flurry of last-minute activity. At a corresponding period in, say, the baseball season, teams in the hunt for post-season berths frequently try to beef their chances with the acquisition of temporary help at the expense of the also-rans, who, having already been eliminated from contention, are often more than willing to cut their losses by jettisoning a few big contracts.

A few last-minute NBA trades will fit this description as well, but for the most part the blockbuster deals teams have been kicking around fit into an entirely different category – Exhibit A being the New York Knicks’ reported interest in putting together a package to acquire 30-year-old Houston guard/forward Tracy McGrady.

McGrady is a seven-time NBA All-Star with a career average of 21.9 points a game, but off-season knee surgery has limited him to cameo appearances in 41 games over the past two seasons, including just six this year, in which he has averaged 3.2 points per game, a somewhat paltry return on a contract that pays him in excess of $20 million (€14.6 million) this year.

The Knicks, coach Mike D’Anoni recently noted, “have won 19 games. We’re interested in anything that moves.” Now, you might suppose things have gone so far off the rails in New York that the team is holding out the faint hope McGrady might abruptly regain the form that made him, in his prime, one of the best players of his generation, but that has absolutely nothing to do with it. Rather, the truth of the matter is that what makes McGrady so attractive to the Knicks is what in any other sport would be considered a poison pill – which is to say, his contract.

In the complicated world of the NBA salary cap, acquiring a $20 million short-term liability would actually benefit the Knicks, since they would then be free to cut McGrady loose after the season and free up that much more room under the cap for next season, when the potential free agent class of 2010 includes the likes of LeBron James and Dwayne Wade, players the Knicks covet but could not hope to sign in the absence of some tricky financial manipulation.

At this time a year ago, the Knicks owned the services of Stephon Marbury, another high-priced former All-Star with a $20.8 million (€15 million) contract. Unlike McGrady, Marbury was not coming off an injury, unless one counts the locker-room cancer the one-time first-round draft choice had historically spread as he wore out his welcome in Milwaukee, New Jersey, and Phoenix before arriving in New York. Unable to deal him away, D’Antonio had placed Marbury on the “inactive” list, but even his presence, in street clothes, on the bench proved so disruptive the Knicks eventually banished him from Madison Square Garden.

That situation festered until last February, when the Boston Celtics, desperate for some guard help as they attempted to defend their NBA championship, agreed to take Marbury off their hands. Boston had to assume only $1.2 million (€875,00) of the player’s salary for the 23 games he spent on their roster. The Celtics could have re-signed him at a bargain-basement price again this year, but, significantly, Marbury is now plying his trade for the Zhongyo Brave Dragons of Shanxi Province in the Chinese Basketball League.

Which is not to say all of these last-minute deals will be about clearing potential salary cap space or ridding one’s team of bad apples, Another rumoured trade in the works yesterday had the Celtics acquiring Nate Robinson, the diminutive (5ft 9ins) Knicks’ guard who won – for the third time – the slam-dunk contest at last weekend’s All-Star game in Dallas. It is a move that would boost the fortunes of both teams – Boston could use some backcourt help down the stretch and looking toward the play-offs, while the Knicks, whose future lies elsewhere, are looking to dump any salary that would enhance their flexibility in the off-season to come – but it, too, is complicated by arcane salary cap regulations.

The $4 million (€2.9 million), one-year contract Robinson signed with the Knicks last summer labels him, by NBA definition, a “Base Year Compensation player”, meaning he can only be traded for a player earning either 125 per cent of his previous contract or one-half of his new one, whichever is greater.

In New York’s discussions with the Boston team the names of Boston reserves Brian Scalabrine, Eddie House, and Tony Allen had all come up. D’Antoni, who has a history with House going back to their Phoenix days, expressed a preference for him, but it turns out of three, only Allen’s contract would be eligible for a straight-up, one-to-one trade, so a deal involving House or Scalabrine would have to be somewhat more elaborately structured.

This stuff probably isn’t what the NBA’s economists had in mind when they cooked up this salary cap stuff in 1987, but every team now employs a specialist, or “capologist”, just to interpret implications of these complex cap rules. There was a time when an NBA general manager needed only be a shrewd judge of basketball talent. That won’t help him much these days unless he’s handy with a slide rule, too.