Hornets, Hawks Likely To Bid On Carlos Boozer

The Hornets and the Hawks are early favorites to register a bid for Carlos Boozer while he’s on amnesty waivers, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter links). The Bulls used the amnesty provision to waive Boozer this afternoon.

Teams are required to have cap space to submit a bid, unlike with regular waivers, which allow teams to use trade exceptions. It’ll take at least enough cap room to register a bid for Boozer’s $1,448,490 minimum salary, a GM confirms to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (Twitter link), though it’ll probably take significantly more than that, given the interest. Boozer will go to the team that makes the highest bid, if there are multiple bids, and if there are two or more bids for the same amount — a possibility, since it’s a blind bidding process — Boozer would go to the team with the worst record from last season. The team that makes the winning bid will pay that amount for Boozer next season, while the rest of his $16.8MM salary will be covered by the Bulls. The bidder’s portion will count against the salary cap, but Chicago’s won’t.

Charlotte has about $52.652MM in guaranteed salary for this coming season, giving it slightly less than $10MM in cap flexibility to make a bid. The Hawks are technically operating over the cap, but they could open about $12MM.

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