Chain reaction...
Adrian Wojnarowski @WojYahooNBA 2m
To clear salary for Tyreke Evans or sign-and-trade w/ Kings, Pelicans expected to try and unload Robin Lopez, league source tells Y!
I would love Lopez on our team. Isn't the word that we received a trade exception from the Nets deal? 5.3M is his 13-14 figure.
I seriously doubt whatever trade exception we get from the Nets will be used anytime soon for signing players or taking on someone else's salary. The Celtics are cutting salary at the coaching position and at the player positions. They are in the luxury tax and are going to not be competing for a championship. They don't want to be a repeat tax payer as the penalties are severe. And Ainge mentioned he is not looking at any free agents this year.
don't trade exception expire after a year? I'm not saying we should use it for Lopez, he's not worth it, but I'd hope we use it before it goes to waste.
Well, you are correct. The exception, whatever value it may have, will have an expiration date of July 11, 2014. So it may just make it a day or so into the next season(2014-15), which is important because it means the Celtics could use it then to sign and trade or just trade for someone and have the money count towards the 2014-15 cap number and not this next year's cap number.
That's important because the C's will be shedding a bunch of salary after next year(Bogans, Humphries and maybe Crawford) and then could add some salary back while using the exception and having a net negative numerical effect on the cap. That way the C's stay out of the luxury tax and can still use the MLE if they want.
Using the exception anytime before the start of the official 2014-15 season would only put the C's into the luxury tax and cost them millions and millions of dollars while hampering future flexibility of adding players because they would be a repeat luxury tax offender.