Luxury Tax Bowel Movements

Over the course of the past year, we've seen a much more common occurrence in the NBA with trading away players. It's called the Luxury Tax Bowel Movement and the goal is to get out of your bloated payment on the ole NBA luxury tax food bill. We've seen it recently with Rasual Butler (a very decent role player that would be perfect on a team that possesses a penetrating point guard who can't be guarded) being shipped the Clippers in exchange for a second round draft pick that isn't going to be at the Hornets disposal until 2016. So why do teams make these trades? Because they're worried about the luxury tax. And who wouldn't be? The luxury tax has been responsible for many terrible occurrences: - Yao Ming's broken foot. - The Brawl in Detroit. - Quincy Douby's unibrow. - Nick Anderson's missed free throws. - The movie Gigli. - Paul Walker. - Every bad ending to an M. Night Shyamalan movie. - J.R. Smith's tumultuous Twitter career. - And of course, Mike Bibby's douche-baggery. It's also responsible for teams having to pay out more money than their payroll would suggest. For those of you unfamiliar with the luxury tax, it's basically a payroll marker in which teams that surpass it with their player salaries have to pay a dollar for dollar penalty to the league for every cent that exceeds this "luxury tax threshold." So if the luxury tax number is $70 million and the Knicks have a payroll of $80 million, they will be forced to pay the league an additional $10 million. For the teams that don't have to pay the luxury tax, they get an equal share of the total amount paid to the league by the teams exceeding the threshold. So not only does it benefit teams to not surpass the threshold because they don't have to pay extra money, it also pays off by giving them some financial relief for being responsible with their money. So now that we have all of the nuts and bolts of the rules out of the way, let's get into how teams try to avoid paying the luxury tax. They dump salary for next to nothing. Over the past two off-seasons, there have been six definite trades that are oddly one-sided and one exchange of centers that had either salary cap or luxury tax ramifications. Here are the deals: - Nuggets trade Marcus Camby to the Clippers for potential swap of 2010 second round draft picks. - Magic trade Keyon Dooling to the Nets for cash. - Suns trade Shaquille O'Neal to the Cavs for Ben Wallace, Sasha Pavlovic, and 2010 second round pick. - Pistons trade Arron Afflalo and Walter Sharpe to the Nuggets for 2011 second round pick. - Hornets trade Tyson Chandler to the Bobcats for Emeka Okafor. - Nuggets trade Steven Hunter, 2010 protected first round pick, and cash to the Grizzlies for second round pick and trade exception. - Hornets trade Rasual Butler to the Clippers for 2016 conditional second round pick. The Pistons trading Afflalo and Sharpe to the Nuggets for what should be a pick in the 50s was all about clearing cap space so they could sign more players outside of blowing all of their cash on Ben Gordon and Charlie Villanueva. But the rest of the deals were clearly moves to be fiscally responsible when money is at its tightest and teams are figuring out how to avoid a Houston Comets-like collapse. The Nuggets inexplicably traded away their defensive stopgap for the possibility of moving up in the second round. This is the equivalent of giving someone your Lexus for the chance to trade bicycles with them in a year. The Magic traded away a valuable backcourt weapon that they had solidly utilized for straight cash homey. The Suns decided that the Shaq experiment that ripped apart their culture of uber-successful basketball was officially not worth it anymore and opted to save roughly $10 million. With the Hornets-Bobcats center swap, the Bobcats decided to save $37 million over the next few seasons in order to help sell the franchise while the Hornets decided to shave close to $3 million in luxury tax penalty payments over the next two years. Then they turned around and traded a potentially valuable role player in Rasual Butler to the Clippers for nothing in order to save nearly $8 million this year in Butler's salary and the attached dollar for dollar luxury tax penalty that came with his expiring contract. And they won't be the only teams either. With the salary cap and luxury tax threshold numbers assumed to fall dramatically next season (estimated 5%), you can bet that at least one of the projected 15 luxury tax teams will make a move that brings next to nothing in return in terms of talent but helps out their wallet. But with this economic climate hurting all of the teams and not just the luxury tax payers, the only way to truly unload a contract in a Luxury Tax Bowel Movement scenario like the trades above show is to get rid of someone with a short contract for a future second round pick that is protected better than the French castle in The Holy Grail. So I've put together the list of luxury tax teams and the players that they might decide to trade in order to avoid or lessen their penalty payment next summer (All team cap numbers are estimations). Teams Possible Luxury Tax Bowel Movements Boston Celtics -- $12.5m over Brian Scalabrine ($3.5m), Tony Allen ($2.5m) *Charlotte Bobcats -- $2.2m under Raja Bell ($5.3m) Cleveland Cavaliers -- $12m over Zyndrunas Ilgauskas ($11.6m), Daniel Gibson ($4.1m per, 3 yrs) Dallas Mavericks -- $22.5m over Drew Gooden ($4.5m) Denver Nuggets -- $6.5m over Malik Allen ($1.3m) Houston Rockets -- $5.6m over Brian Cook ($3.5m), Brent Barry ($2.1m) Los Angeles Lakers -- $22.5m over Derek Fisher ($5.1m) Miami Heat -- $2.5m over Quentin Richardson ($8.7m) Milwaukee Bucks -- $1m over Luke Ridnour ($6.5m), Kurt Thomas ($3.8m) New Orleans Hornets -- $4.5m over Antonio Daniels ($6.6m) New York Knicks -- $10.5m over Larry Hughes ($13.7m), Darko Milicic ($7.6m), Chris Duhon ($6.1m) Orlando Magic -- $11m over Marcin Gortat ($5.9m per, 5 yrs) Phoenix Suns -- $9m over Leandro Barbosa ($6.6m) San Antonio Spurs -- $11m over Roger Mason ($3.8m), Matt Bonner ($3.3m), Michael Finley ($2.5m) Utah Jazz -- $13.5m over Carlos Boozer ($12.7m), Matt Harpring ($6.5m), Kyle Korver ($5.4m) Washington Wizards -- $9m over Mike Miller ($9.8m), Mike James ($6.5m), Brendan Haywood ($6m) * - Bobcats aren't over the luxury tax at the moment but hold the restricted free agent rights to Raymond Felton, which technically puts them over because of his cap hold. There are only four teams in the league right now that could eat a contract without giving up a player because of their remaining salary cap room: Oklahoma City Thunder - ~ $12.5 million Sacramento Kings - ~ $6.8 million Portland Trailblazers - ~ $4.4 million Memphis Grizzlies - ~ $3.75 million These teams could essentially take back a contract that falls within their cap room for a draft pick and give their trading partner a bit of potential trade flexibility with a trade exception for the amount of the contract. For example, the Nuggets traded Steve Hunter to the Grizzlies this off-season for essentially a second round pick and ended up receiving a trade exception in the amount of $3.9 million. Now, here are a few notes about the luxury tax bowel movement options that I mentioned above: - Ilgauskas seems like the most likely player to go because of the addition to Shaq but the only way I see this happening is if it's clear that Shaq works better with LeBron than Big Z does. And even then, they probably aren't trading Ilgauskas away for nothing in return. They'd likely acquire another veteran to help convince LBJ that he needs to stay in Cleveland for the next five years. - Daniel Gibson (I refuse to call a grown man "Boobie") has a much longer contract than you would think a team would be after but he's still considered a somewhat valuable shooter and I would think that if the Cavs can get rid of his contract without having to take back anything other than a highly protected second round pick then the Cavs front office would jump all over that. - Malik Allen is really the only player on Denver that would have any value on the trade market but with such a small expiring contract, it wouldn't save them much. Unfortunately for the Nuggets' capologist, everybody else worth a damn is signed for significant years. - As far as my understanding of the CBA goes, Drew Gooden would have to agree to the trade because he signed a one-year deal. Also, the deal couldn't go down until sometime around the New Year. - The Knicks don't really have anybody under contract right now, so I don't know how likely they are to trade away a player. - I think Leandro Barbosa might be a prime trading piece this season for the Suns. If they could get a future first round pick for Barbosa, wouldn't they have to consider taking that deal? They aren't really going anywhere right now other than a first round and out playoff appearance and Barbosa in a slower style of play is much less valuable. His value will never be higher from here on out. - I believe that the Hornets would be dying to get rid of Antonio Daniels' contract to get completely under the luxury tax. It would be a swing of about $15 million for this franchise. I think you could easily get an unprotected first round pick in 2011 or 2012. - If the Jazz seem like they're a top-tier team in the first couple of months during the season, I think they'll keep Carlos Boozer and try to move Matt Harpring. They won't mind paying the luxury tax for a team that contends for the title. However, if they suffer through a ton of injuries like they did last year, I'd expect Boozer to be jettisoned for pennies in return so they can avoid a huge luxury tax penalty. - And I don't expect Mike Miller to be dealt from the Wizards unless they're suffering through terrible injuries again and have a repeat of last season. Ultimately, it sucks to see your team ship away a good player due to the fact that they've been financially irresponsible over the years and can't figure out how to survive this down time in the economy. You never want to give something away for a future second round pick because it's essentially saying that unless you strike gold with another Michael Redd or Manu Ginobili, you're okay with dumping a contract without anything of substance in return. But these are the days of the Luxury Tax Bowel Movements and that's the kind of crap fans have to deal with.