FanPost

The True Purpose of 2015 is Summer 2016

So many words have been spent on what we might or might not do with this 2015 flexibility that Olshey has built into our cap space.

However, this is a much larger plan, in my opinion. Contracts are not really $X million, they are X% of the salary cap. That's by definition how most of them are defined in the CBA. NBA contracts are also almost unseverable, by either side. That means once it's signed, pretty much no matter what happens, that player will be payed those amounts on that schedule by whoever is their employer at the time.

Everyone has noticed that 2015 we have most of our contracts up for signing.

What everyone has failed to notice is that in 2016 a new national media contract will come into play, and the conservative estimate is that this will increase the salary cap to $78 million.

Now, suppose you have the chance to resign everyone on your team to longer contracts in the summer of 2015... at the "pre-inflation" rate. You might be able to sign your entire team for about 25% less than they would cost the following year.

But better than that, the following year you'll have about $18 million in cap space (lots of other teams will too) and you won't have to spend ANY of it on keeping your core together.

I don't think that 2015 is about what Olshey wants to do in 2015. I think that the summer of 2015 is about getting Aldridge, Matthews and Lopez locked in for 4-5 years at 30% less than they will cost the following year.

The cap is going to jump in 2016. Our current set of contracts allows us to "carry over" our old cap salaries into a new cap era for a very long period of time, and will also make our players enormously valuable when it comes to trading three years from now.

Even if Aldridge gets paid the absolute MAX next summer, relative to the cap and his max salary the FOLLOWING summer, he'll be paid about the same as he is now. If he signs a 5 year contract next summer, he will be a HUGE bargain three years from now.

There is so much that goes into things like running a team. Was anyone here really thinking about how the cap might change? The cap is going to jump almost $18-$20 million in the summer of 2016, Olshey is giving us the best possible position for that summer by locking everything in the year before.