Gallo? Help Me Understand What Our Option Are

[Redz]

I am admittedly, purposefully unknowledgeable about how free agency and cap space works.  Why can’t we use the money we’re now not paying Hayward to sign a top guy like Gallinari?  If Hayward had opted in we would have owed $34 million, right? 

What do the Celtics actually have to work with for an unrestricted free agent?

[hardlyyardley]

I also do not how C's can get a trade exception and how they would not use it

[Who]

Gallo signed with Atlanta yesterday if I am not mistaken.

[Redz]

Gallo signed with Atlanta yesterday if I am not mistaken.

OK

Missed that.  So, I guess there aren’t a whole lot of top notch options left out there, but let’s say the Celtics want to sign Joe Blow for the $30 million Hayward was due, what’s stopping them?

[liam]

Gallo signed with Atlanta yesterday if I am not mistaken.

OK

Missed that.  So, I guess there aren’t a whole lot of top notch options left out there, but let’s say the Celtics want to sign Joe Blow for the $30 million Hayward was due, what’s stopping them?

Cap space....

[hpantazo]

Gallo signed with Atlanta yesterday if I am not mistaken.

OK

Missed that.  So, I guess there aren’t a whole lot of top notch options left out there, but let’s say the Celtics want to sign Joe Blow for the $30 million Hayward was due, what’s stopping them?

Celtics are over the cap even with Hayward gone, so all they have to work with is the mid-level exception (~9 million a year) the bi-annual exception (about 3 million a year) and vet min deals.

[Neurotic Guy]

Gallo signed with Atlanta yesterday if I am not mistaken.

OK

Missed that.  So, I guess there aren’t a whole lot of top notch options left out there, but let’s say the Celtics want to sign Joe Blow for the $30 million Hayward was due, what’s stopping them?

I am leaps and bounds from the right person to be answering this, but essentially C's had Bird rights and could sign Hayward (or receive salary back in an S&T) even though the signing would have put them over the cap.   Without Hayward's salary they may be still over the cap (I'm not certain), but if under at all, not enough bring in an expensive FA.  I think they have a the MLE (if over cap) at 9M or so and a lower exception at 4M or so. They'll sign 1 or 2 (Baynes perhaps) but may not be exciting signings.   Of course, they can also still trade.

[ozgod]

I am admittedly, purposefully unknowledgeable about how free agency and cap space works.  Why can’t we use the money we’re now not paying Hayward to sign a top guy like Gallinari?  If Hayward had opted in we would have owed $34 million, right? 

What do the Celtics actually have to work with for an unrestricted free agent?

Basically we were already over the salary cap of $109m even before Hayward opting in. Teams can exceed the salary cap to re-sign their own players (or more precisely players they have Bird rights with). The reason we could go over the cap is because we have his Bird rights which allows us to go over the cap but it would have pushed us into luxury cap territory. So his opting out and signing elsewhere doesn't give us any room to sign any other free agent using cap space. We have to use what is called Exceptions, such as the midlevel exception, which is annual, or the biannual exception, which can't be used two years in a row. There's some more details about the BAE which I won't bore you with. Suffice to say that the midlevel exception is $6m I think for a luxury taxpaying team, or $9.6m for a nontaxpaying team.

Since Hayward's opting out moves us away from the luxury tax line we were able to use the nontaxpaying MLE to sign Tristan for $9.6m/yr for 2 years. I think we used the BAE to sign Jeff Teague, amount unknown but less than $3.6m. So we don't have anything else to sign any other FA with unless it's for the vet min. Any other transactions would have to be done via trade.

Now if Danny ends up convincing the Hornets to acquire Hayward via sign and trade, then we could either try to get some players back, or create a trade exception that can then be used in another transaction. That's a whole new explanation however