New question:
Projections for this coming season:
Non tax payer MLE is 8.6 mil
(Cap) Room MLE is 4.4 mil.
MY numbers may be off, but the difference is always about the same, and that is my question:
What is the rationale for difference? If anything I would have thought Room MLE would be higher (but what do I know?)
The MLE is for teams that are over the cap. I believe the logic is the MLE allows a team over the cap to add a new "average" player at a price that is close to what an average NBA player makes.
Of course, those teams can still sign players they had on the team the previous year through other methods but this allows them to sign a new player, or players if that team breaks up the MLE to use on multiple players.
The MLE comes in two types. The standard MLE and the taxpayer MLE. For teams in the luxury tax, the league penalizes those teams by making it more difficult to add players and so they are only eligible for the taxpayer MLE, that is less money.
Also available to teams over the cap but below the apron is the BLE which is an exception that can be used only once every two years. It is much smaller that the MLE.
2019-20
MLE standard will be $9.264 million
MLE taxpayer will be $5.711 million.
BLE will be $3.619 million
For teams under the cap, they of course have the room under the cap to sign players. For this reason they do not have access to either MLE or the BLE. But once the team has used up their cap space they are given one exception to use, the Room Exception.
The Room Exception for next year is set at $4.76 million.