Mikhail Prokhorov could easily pay an extra 20 Mil under the table. Now he won’t need to report income tax whatsoever.

maes sense, I suppose. But we would have to be under the cap starting next offseason

Mid-Level Exception (Non-Tapayer MLE) is for teams that are over the cap, but under the luxury tax threshold. $5M (starting salary), 3% annual growth, up to 4 years.
Mini-MLE (Taxpayer MLE) is $2.5M (starting salary) and up to 2 years for teams that are over the luxury tax threshold. 3% raises.
Bi-Annual Exception is $1.9M (starting salary) up to 2 years with 3% raises. Can be used every other year.
$2.5M exception is for teams that were under the cap, made a few signings and now over the cap. We have this one at our disposal right now.

Really?
This is probably something fodder for a fresh thread but, I’m not sure about re-signing Billups that high. Priority’s going to be signing a 2/3 wing for something around Butler’s numbers. You’ve got two years before you have to max Griffin and Paul, which is going to take you to the luxury tax. You’ve still got Mo and I don’t know how many minutes Billups will actually see this year.
To my mind you’ve got to make a choice: Billups or Mo. I’d take Billups but then you have to send out Mo… and he’s not cheap for what he brings.

When Paul Pierce voiced his displeasure with the Celtics FO (get help or trade), they got him Garnett and Allen.

When Kobe threw his tantrum, the Lakers got Pau Gasol for a bag of chips.

George Shinn did not want to pay to keep players in New Orleans. Paul was upset that that vital members of the team were traded away. The moves were for financial reasons, but you’re not going to convince a star to stay if you don’t spend.

Cleveland surrounded LeBron with nice complementary role players, but the best players outside of him were Mo Williams and old man Z. They’re nice to have, but not 2nd and 3rd best on a contender quality. Shaq was a player in name only.

Otis Smith made some risky trades to try to make it work in Orlando, but it ended up wiping away their cap flexibility. Dwight is entering his prime years and wants to be surrounded by more than 30+ Jameer Nelson, Turkoglu and hoping that Ryan Anderson can keep performing well. He sees Amar’e with Melo; LeBron and Wade with Bosh; Kobe with Gasol and Bynum; and many other of his peers on teams with quality 2nd and 3rd options. He now wants out. If they could go after Deron, he would probably stay.

As shay stated, you have 7 years minimum to make it work when you draft a stud. Get it right instead of scrambling when the time is almost up. Thankfully for us, Neil gets it.

I would love to see more Reggie Millers, Tim Duncans, John Stocktons, etc. but the media has made it hard with all of their criticisms. They all want rings so they’re not considered failures. You’re nobody unless you win. It doesn’t matter that a lot of it depends on the organization, staff (Coach & GM), quality of teammates and the ability to attract bargain value free-agents. Every championship team in the history of the game has had a combination of hall-of-fame talent and all-stars. The big market teams are more likely to be attractive to other players and will have the deeper pockets to put together quality teams.

Toronto is probably the 4th or 5th biggest city outside of NY, LA or Chicago, but it’s in Canada and haven’t done a great job of building good teams. They have had stars/stars in the making (e.g. Carter, Bosh, McGrady), but need to build on it.

The owners cut the players salaries by twelve percent. That’s significant to them.
The truth is the disparity between the have and the have-not teams doesn’t really have that much to do with the CBA. Revenue sharing between the teams would solve some of the problems, but ownership kept that out of the negotiations.
The truth is, the big big big market teams have no interest in a hard cap or a level-playing field. The Knicks, the Bulls, the Lakers like the playing field the way it is, thank you.