It has been suggested that the Miami Heat were engaged by the Philadelphia 76ers with an interesting proposition at the Feb. 20 NBA trading deadline. It has been suggested that Sixers general manager Sam Hinkie proposed a trade to Heat general manager Pat Riley of Evan Turner, in exchange for Udonis Haslem and a future first round draft pick.

Riley reportedly rejected.

Did he do the right thing? Well, that’s for you to decide.

The Mechanics

Let’s get a couple things out of the way before we begin.

First, the rumored trade, as described, doesn’t work. It violates salary cap rules.

Taxpaying teams like the Heat can only take back up to 125% of their outgoing salaries, plus $100K, no matter how much salary the team is sending away.

Haslem makes $4.3 million this year. He can therefore only be traded for a player(s) who makes as much as $5.5 million. Turner makes $6.7 million.

When trades are rumored about, oftentimes only the vital components are leaked. The technical details are often either not yet established or not considered vital, and are therefore not leaked alongside the rest of the trade. If indeed this rumor is true, that may be what’s happened here, particularly because the solution is simple. If the Heat were to add an expiring contract to the deal – say, for example, Rashard Lewis – the trade would be legal.

Second, there’s the matter of the draft pick. The concept of including a first round draft pick is quite vague. When would that pick be conferred? What protections would be attached to it?

The Heat’s current predicament answers these questions, and quite nicely.  Read more…

Update (3/8/14): The Heat have signed DeAndre Liggins to a second 10-day contract. Once this one expires, the Heat can’t offer him another one. By league rules, the Heat would need to offer Liggins (at least) a rest-of-season contract (at any time through the end of the regular season) or nothing.

The Miami Heat have made the first use of their NBA D-League affiliate after purchasing operational control this season, with Tuesday’s questionable signing of swingman DeAndre Liggins of the Sioux Falls Skyforce to a 10-day contract.

Liggins had been playing with the Skyforce as an unaffiliated player, and was free to sign with any NBA team.

The 6-foot-6-inch, 209-pound Chicago native was originally recruited out of high school as a point guard by the University of Kentucky for the incoming class of 2008. He spent his first two years mostly coming off the bench, but in his junior year, coach John Calipari decided to start him as a shooting guard. After his junior season, he elected to enter the 2011 NBA Draft.

Liggins was selected with the 53rd overall pick by the Orlando Magic. He spent the year with the Magic on a one-year minimum salary contract, barely playing. He went on sign with the Oklahoma City Thunder for the 2012-13 season, during which time he had multiple assignments with the D-League’s Tulsa 66ers.  Read more…

The Miami Heat have dumped the contract of Roger Mason Jr. at the Feb. 20 trade deadline, in a move that saves owner Micky Arison $1.05 million and opens up a roster spot to utilize either on a current free agent or on a player to be waived over the next 10 days.

The Heat will send Mason Jr. to the Sacramento Kings, who are expected to immediately waive him. They’ll also send $786,095 in cash to complete the deal.

While that amount of cash may seem random, it actually isn’t.

Mason Jr. is a 10-year N.B.A. veteran. He is playing under a one-year contract. He is earning $1,399,507, the minimum salary for a player with his tenure. However, he is only required to be paid $884,293 of that amount, equal to the minimum salary for a two-year N.B.A. veteran. The league will reimburse the rest at the end of the season. Therefore, he really only costs the smaller amount, and only the smaller amount is included in team salary for cap and tax purposes. They do this so teams won’t shy away from signing older veterans simply because they are more expensive than younger veterans.

As for the mechanics of how the reimbursement works, he is to be paid his full prorated salary of $8,232.39 per day (equal to his $1,399,507 salary divided by the 170 days in the regular season), until the total reaches $884,293. At that point, he continues to get paid his fully prorated salary but the league reimburses the rest. With the regular season having started on Oct. 29, he earned that much by Feb. 13, 2014. Since that time, his services have essentially been free of charge for the Heat.

However, since the contract has now been traded, the reimbursement will get allocated to the respective teams based on the number of days accrued with each team. Therefore, while the Kings will be responsible for the $452,782 remaining on his contract for the 55 days left in the regular season, they will actually only owe $286,095 after accounting for the reimbursement.

The Heat essentially covered his remaining salary obligations for the Kings, and then topped it off with a $500,000 profit, which serves as the only impetus for Sacramento to make the deal.

In order to send something back, which is required in all trades, the Kings will return the Heat a 2015 second-round pick which is protected for selections 31-49 and 56-60. If the pick ultimately falls within either of its protected ranges and is therefore not conveyed, then Sacramento’s obligation to Miami will be extinguished. This essentially means that the Heat will only get the pick if it lands between pick numbers 50 and 55.

While this range may seem random, it actually isn’t.

The Kings intended to provide enough protection on the pick to ensure that it will never be received. Such trades are commonplace in the N.B.A., and are typically accomplished by trading away a second-round pick on condition that it lands within the last five of the draft. However, the Kings have previously traded the pick to the Boston Celtics with that condition. So, now, the Celtics will receive the pick if it is among the last five, the Heat will receive the pick if it is among the previous five, and the Kings will retain the pick if it is among the first twenty of the second round, as is likely.  Read more…

The Indiana Pacers added size and depth Saturday when they signed center Andrew Bynum to a contract for the reason of the season.

The Pacers had $2.15 million left of their full-midlevel exception. However, starting January 10, it has been prorating down at a rate of 1/170 per day. As of Saturday, it was valued at $1.859 million, which was roughly equivalent to the amount by which the Pacers were below the luxury tax threshold.

They ended up using $1 million of it on Bynum, earning him $441K more than the minimum.

The move still gives the Pacers additional room below the tax to make roster moves, if necessary.

Bynum, who will join the Pacers next week, will back up All-Star Roy Hibbert along with Ian Mahinmi. Also featuring power forwards David West and Luis Scola, the Pacers will have some of the best depth in the N.B.A. at the big man positions.

The move also kept Bynum away from the rival Miami Heat, who beat the Pacers in seven games in last season’s Eastern Conference finals.

Five teams were interested in Bynum, including the Heat, but it was the Pacers who had a roster spot and the space under the luxury tax to add him now.

The Heat had the ability to match and outbid the Pacers for Bynum because they have all of their $3.183 million taxpayer mid-level exception still remaining, which has been prorated down to $2.752 million as of Saturday.

However, the Heat currently have a full roster of 15 players and a luxury-tax bill of $15.5 million, meaning signing Bynum would have been expensive.

Matching the offer from the Pacers would have cost the Heat $3.2 million, increasing total payroll obligations to nearly $108 million for the season, though that figure is still below the team’s projected payroll prior to the Joel Anthony trade.

There were methods the Heat could have employed to reduce that cost substantially.

Trading away both Roger Mason Jr. and Toney Douglas, if such trades were possible, would have created a cash flow positive scenario for the Heat, even after paying Bynum his million. It would have also opened up an additional roster spot with which to attract a wing player who specializes in long-range shooting and defense.

In the end, however, the Heat were only willing to offer Bynum the minimum, at a cost, when including the tax, of $1.1 million. It wasn’t enough.

The Feb. 20 N.B.A. trade deadline is now officially less than a month away.

The Miami Heat started their dealings early this season, shipping Joel Anthony to the Boston Celtics along with a million dollars and two draft picks (one second-rounder and another that was originally Philadelphia’s and will likely become a pair of second-rounders). In return, the Heat got a player from Golden State, but this deal wasn’t about Toney Douglas as much as it was about the benjamins.

Anthony, who lost his role to Chris Andersen last season and had been a reclusive presence on the court ever since, ultimately became a casualty of the Heat’s cash crunch and managing partner Micky Arison’s desire to creep closer to the luxury-tax line. He didn’t get there, not with this deal, but it did save him around $20 million, and it did eliminate one of the obstacles to reshaping the roster after this season, when LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh can all opt out of their existing contracts.

Now, it’s conceivable that only Norris Cole ($2.0 million) and Udonis Haslem ($4.6 million option) will be under contract on July 1, as Arison, Pat Riley and the Heat try to retain James, Wade and Bosh, and perhaps Mario Chalmers, Ray Allen, Michael Beasley and even Greg Oden.

That’s the long-term vision.

The short-term? The trade did nothing to advance the cause. The Heat, championship material as they are currently constructed, nonetheless have various needs that have yet to be addressed.  Read more…

The Miami Heat have traded center Joel Anthony to the Boston Celtics, as part of a three-team deal, in exchange for guard Toney Douglas from the Golden State Warriors.

The Heat also sent the Celtics $1 million in cash and a pair of draft picks to complete the deal: A 2016 second-round pick and a lottery protected first-round pick originally acquired from the Philadelphia 76ers that will become a pair of second-rounders in 2015 and 2016 if the Sixers fail to make the playoffs this season and next.

The trade isn’t about Joel Anthony and isn’t about Toney Douglas.

It’s also not about Greg Oden, who appears to be on the verge of moving into the Heat’s rotation, or about Andrew Bynum, and how money freed up from today’s trade might make such a signing more financially palatable.

The trade is, more than anything else, a continuing recognition that the harshest elements of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement will take its toll on how the Heat do business.

This past summer, it was the amnesty release of Mike Miller. Then it was declining to utilize the mid-level exception. Now it’s moving Anthony’s untenable contract off the books, a move, when accounting for his 2014-15 salary will save the Heat at least $20 million.  Read more…

Note: This post has been updated from December 6 to reflect recent events.

The Miami Heat organization appears to be content with its current roster.

The team’s three stars – Dwyane Wade, LeBron James and Chris Bosh – are all producing career highs in scoring efficiency while playing career lows in minutes, a strategy designed to preserve their health and endurance for the playoff run ahead. The team can afford to implement such a strategy because it has the most and highest quality depth in the Big Three era. And it still has a potentially game-changing piece in Greg Oden who has yet to play this season but is reportedly making strong progress toward that goal.

The team is feeling so comfortable with its roster, in fact, that it, somewhat surprisingly, chose to guarantee the contract of Roger Mason Jr. and, in doing so, kept its roster at the full 15-player maximum, despite the fact that a seemingly wonderful alternative in Andrew Bynum had become available on the free agent market and had listed the Heat as a preferred destination.

If the Heat is to reciprocate that interest, it first needs to clear a roster spot. With its already monstrous payroll and limited backcourt depth, the preferred way to do that is to trade away the untenable contract of seldom-used center Joel Anthony.

They must move quickly. The Heat has only until the Feb. 20 trade deadline to execute a trade prior to the end of this season. And Bynum is currently an unrestricted free agent who can sign with any team at any time.

Anthony is being paid $3.8 million this season, and he has a player option for next season at the same value which he is sure to exercise. When including the tax, he will cost the Heat $11.8 million this year and as much as $17 million next year. The Heat can save all but the $1.7 million of that and counting they’ve already paid him in salary for this season. What would you trade in exchange for $27 million?  Read more…

In a move that has the Chicago Bulls thinking about the future but could have major implications for the Miami Heat in the present, the Bulls executed a significant trade with the Cleveland Cavaliers Tuesday morning. They sent forward Luol Deng to the Cavs in exchange for center Andrew Bynum, three future draft picks and huge payroll savings.

The Bulls get a first round draft pick owed to the Cavs by the Sacramento Kings, which is top-12 protected in 2014, top-10 protected from 2015 through 2017, and, if not conveyed, converts to a 2017 second round pick if it is in the top 55 and nothing if not. They also get second round picks in 2015 and 2016, acquired by the Cavs from the Portland Trail Blazers. Finally, the Bulls will be able to swap positions with the Cavs in the first round of the 2015 draft as long as the Cavs’ pick is outside the top 14.

In addition to the draft picks, the Bulls will recognize huge payroll savings because Bynum’s current $12.25 million salary is only $6 million guaranteed. The trade will cut about $7.8 million off their cap and get them out of the tax. Chicago will save about $6.8 million in salary payouts and $12.3 million in taxes, as well as qualify for a tax distribution (paid to teams below the tax from half of the tax proceeds of teams above the tax) currently estimated at $3.2 million. That’s more than $22 million in instantaneous savings⁽¹⁾.

In order to recognize the savings, the Bulls will terminate Bynum’s contract shortly. He’ll then be placed on waivers at 5:00 pm, where he’ll remain for the following 48 hours, during which time other teams may assume his contract. No team in the league has the necessary cap space (or a large enough trade exception) to claim him. At 5:00 pm on Thursday, Bynum will become an unrestricted free agent.

Rumor has it that he wants to join the Los Angeles Clippers or the Heat.

Should the Heat be interested? Absolutely!  Read more…

The date in which all N.B.A. contracts become fully guaranteed for the rest of the season, Jan. 10, is looming. That leaves the Heat with a decision to make on the non-guaranteed contract of Roger Mason Jr.

Mason Jr. plays a somewhat valuable role for the Heat as a versatile three-point shooting specialist who serves as the team’s third string option at both the point and shooting guard positions. But he (along with Michael Beasley, who has undoubtedly earned his keep), is also the only player who has a less than fully guaranteed contract.

Mason Jr. is a 10-year N.B.A. veteran. He is playing under a one-year contract. He is earning $1,399,507, the minimum salary for a player with his tenure.

When a player has been in the N.B.A. for three or more seasons and is playing under a one-year contract at the minimum salary, the league reimburses the team for part of his salary – any amount above the minimum salary level for a two-year veteran. As a result, the Heat is only responsible for $884,293 of his salary, equal to the minimum salary for a two-year veteran. The league will reimburse the Heat for the rest at the end of the season. Therefore, if Mason Jr. plays out his contract, he really only costs the Heat the smaller amount, and only the smaller amount is included in team salary for cap and tax purposes. They do this so teams won’t shy away from signing older veterans simply because they are more expensive than younger veterans.

As for the mechanics of how the reimbursement works, the Heat is responsible for Mason Jr.’s full prorated salary of $8,232.39 per day (equal to his $1,399,507 salary divided by the 170 days in the regular season), until the total reaches $884,293. At that point, the league reimburses the Heat for the rest. With the regular season having started on Oct. 29, he will earn that much by Feb. 13, 2014. His services from that point on essentially become free of charge.

However, if the Heat want to capitalize on his non-guarantee, they will have to waive him by no later than 5 p.m. on Jan. 7. That’s because all non-guaranteed contracts across the N.B.A. will become fully guaranteed on Jan. 10, so a player needs be gone by no later than Jan. 9 to avoid the guarantee and it takes 48 hours for a waived player to actually clear waivers. Players continue to get paid while they are on waivers.

By that time, Mason Jr. will have already earned $600,965 on his contract. Therefore, if the Heat were to waive him on Jan. 7, they’d be saving a total of $283,328. When including the tax, given the Heat’s current tax position, that amount rises to $991,649.

The Heat is already spending $110,077,842 on player payroll obligations this season, an amount at which the team presumably isn’t anywhere near profitable, so, to some extent, every dollar counts – particularly a million of them.

However, there is some degree of financial justification not to waive him in order to capitalize on his partial guarantee.  Read more…

Despite his passion for the game, Dwyane Wade was not much more than an average basketball player as a youngster. Initially, he made a bigger impression on the football coaches at H.L. Richards High School in Oak Lawn, on the South Side of Chicago, than he did on basketball coach Jack Fitzgerald’s squad.

A gritty cornerback and wide receiver, Wade showed promise on the gridiron, but he couldn’t kick his obsession for basketball. He idolized former Chicago Bulls star Michael Jordan. So he spent his second season with the Bulldogs on the sophomore basketball team.

Determined to earn time on the varsity squad, Wade worked out rigorously before his junior year in the summer of 1998, improving his ball-handling skills and his outside shot. Wade’s body cooperated, too, as he shot up four inches to six-feet, two-inches tall.

Always a tenacious rebounder, Wade now had the size and skills to excel in all phases of the game. Recognizing an emerging star, Fitzgerald made the junior his go-to guy. Wade did it all for the Bulldogs. If Richards needed to break the press, Fitzgerald put the ball in Wade’s hands. If the team needed a hoop in close, Wade got the ball in the post. For the year, he averaged 20.7 points and 7.6 rebounds, and opened eyes all around Chicagoland.

He responded to the extra attention with an even more marvelous senior season. Wade went for a double-double almost every game that year, averaging 27.0 points and 11.0 rebounds while leading his team to a 24-5 record and a berth in the title game of the Class AA Eisenhower Sectional of the 1999-00 Illinois High School Association (IHSA) State Championship (though without the acclaim of former Heat player Patrick Beverley, who made it all the way to the final four of the Class AA State Championships with his Marshall high school team in 2005-06, or Derrick Rose, who won the Class AA State Championship with his Simeon high school team in 2005-06 and 2006-07). Wade set school records for points (676) and steals (106) in a season that year.

The college scholarship offers didn’t come pouring in, though.

Wade dreamed of playing for Michigan, inspired by the Fab Five. But some of the schools looking at Wade, Michigan included, stopped looking when his first ACT score was low. Fearing he wouldn’t be able to cut it academically, most backed off.

“My first set of scores wasn’t bad,” Wade said. “They were disastrous. They sucked.”

Due to his academic problems, Wade was recruited by only four college basketball programs for the incoming class of 2000 –  DePaul, Illinois State, Bradley and Marquette. Each remained interested in Wade even though he struggled to get his ACT up to the qualifying standard. In three tries, he never did.

The Golden Eagles nonetheless accepted Dwyane as a partial qualifier, meaning he could practice with the basketball team as a freshman but not suit up for games due to a lack of compliance with the NCAA’s Proposition 48.

Academically ineligible for play during his freshman year at Marquette, Wade sought tutoring to improve his writing skills in order to regain eligibility. When he became eligible to play the following year (2001–02), he led the Golden Eagles in points (17.8), rebounds (6.6), assists (3.4), steals (2.5) and blocks (1.1), and guided the team to a 26-7 record and its first NCAA tournament berth since 1997.

Wade had displayed not only perseverance but also toughness, playing the latter half of the season through injury. After the season, in March 2002, Wade underwent arthroscopic surgery on his left knee to deal with a small tear in his lateral meniscus. The torn portion of the meniscus was removed, and Wade was back on the court training for his junior year within weeks.  Read more…