I thought that if they don’t use it it wouldn’t count. if they do, then that would take them over the cap. Appreciate your insight on this.

Looks like Smith wants out of Atlanta unless they change coaches.

Nobody with money is interested in Smith anymore, and so Atlanta should be able to resign him at a reasonable rate, for maybe $11 million per year. We should engineer some sort of trade with Atlanta to take Josh Smith off of their hands.

Tim Thomas+Brevin Knight + DeAndre Jordan+Pick for Josh Smith.

Then our lineup would be:

Davis, Mobley, Smith, Camby, Kaman (with Gordon, Thornton, Powell on the bench).

How about Thomas + Thornton for Smith? It answers 1,2,3. Of course, I wouldn’t want to give up Thornton as he appears to be developing into a star player, but Josh Smith is already a star and younger than Thornton. It seems though that Thornton is easier to get along with than Smith (he had problems with his coach; and he might also have problems with Dunleavy), so I am not sure if I would make that trade myself.

To me, when those guys get traded, I want it to be a home run. If Smith is your home run, then pour all you have into it. Thomas + filler + 2 1st rounders.

Otherwise, wait. As we see with this Camby deal, right place and right time is huge. The Clippers have the right pieces to make the big play if the opportunity arises.

Mobley + Thomas is a max contract player. $19M in expiring contracts for 2010 + picks should be able to do something very interesting.

1) Is this also known as the bi-annual exception?, and
2) Is it available? If not, why not? and
3) If the answer to 2 is ‘no,’ am I right in assuming we’ll have the MLE and the other exception available next year, as we don’t seem to be losing any contracts of substance?

It just means you can sign any player to the minimum salary. The minimum salary for each individual is determined by years of service.

I am not certain about the bi-annual status, but really its the same as the MLE. If the Clippers had to renounce it to get far enough under the cap, its gone. If not, they don’t need it anyway.

All exemptions will reboot next year.

Hoopsworld’s analysis.

I’m not making fun of Mr. Pincus at all, but I put it in this thread because of this Nene Hilarious part:

In the meantime his cap number is computed at $10 million which leaves the Clippers with between $869k and $5.7 million in cap space (depending on Baron’s exact starting salary).

Ya I know, that’s what I said.

I didn’t know this:

It gets lost in the fine print, but the Camby deal netted the Nuggets a $10-million trade exception, giving them a one-year window to acquire a $10-million player without matching salaries against the cap. Add in the savings from Iverson’s and Chucky Atkins’ expiring deals and the front office will have real, live options.