Salary Cap Question: Are Traded Players Salaries Prorated Against the Cap?

[Vermont Green]

I realized this was a question (at least to me) in another thread.  For a trade, salaries generally match or one team has space.  In the case where a TPE is used in a trade, the salaries also don't match.

The question is specifically if we were to trade for Dummond or someone with a similar contract at the trade deadline, how much of his salary would apply towards our hard cap for this season?  He makes $28.7M for the year but if we acquire him at the deadline, say that is 50% through the season, do we only have to apply $14.35M to our salary value for this season?

This is important as we have a hard cap and a tax threshold we are working against.  The full TPE would be needed to make the trade work to bring in a player like Drummond so it would be totally used up in this case but would it be OK against the hard cap due to prorating the salary?

If this is true, it opens up a whole lot more possibilities to use the big TPE at or near the trade deadline to bring in a high salary player.

[bdm860]

All of it counts.


Tax is determined by total salary on the last game of the regular season. (CBA FAQ #18).

You count the full season salary of all players on the roster, and don't include any salary for players you traded away (CBA FAQ #13).


And if a team is hard capped, they can't at any time go over the hard cap.  So the C's wouldn't be able to circumvent the system by trading for Drummond now with the TPE (going over the hard cap) and then trading/waiving players later in the season to get under the hard cap before the final regular season game.  That's not allowed (CBA FAQ #20).


The only time partial salaries really come into play is for the Owners cutting the checks to the players, as they're paying the players on the roster.  So if C's somehow traded for Drummond they might only actually pay him the last 25% of his salary or ~$7.2m, but it's the full $28.75 that counts for the cap/taxes.

[Vermont Green]

Thanks.

TP

[NKY fan]

All of it counts.


Tax is determined by total salary on the last game of the regular season. (CBA FAQ #18).

You count the full season salary of all players on the roster, and don't include any salary for players you traded away (CBA FAQ #13).


And if a team is hard capped, they can't at any time go over the hard cap.  So the C's wouldn't be able to circumvent the system by trading for Drummond now with the TPE (going over the hard cap) and then trading/waiving players later in the season to get under the hard cap before the final regular season game.  That's now allowed (CBA FAQ #20).


The only time partial salaries really come into play is for the Owners cutting the checks to the players, as they're paying the players on the roster.  So if C's somehow traded for Drummond they might only actually pay him the last 25% of his salary or ~$7.2m, but it's the full $28.75 that counts for the cap/taxes.

Partial salaries count against the cap when you sign Someone for the MLE or vet min midway thru the season. So if you sign someone to 1.6M vet min after game 36 but before game 37 they are getting paid $800K and that is the amount that hits the cap.


Now for sign and trade the following year I think you use his full vet min salary to determine max allowed salary going out or to give the same player the max allowed raise if you are over the cap the following year.