An NBA club’s team salary can generally be divided up into two parts — the salaries and bonuses that teams are paying to the players currently on their roster, and “dead money,” which represents cap hits for players no longer on the team.
Dead money can take a number of forms. It can represent the cap hit or buyout total for a player who was waived earlier in the season; it can be a cap hit for a player who was waived in a previous year, perhaps via the stretch provision; it can even be the cap hit for a 10-day contract that has expired.
It’s virtually impossible to avoid carrying at least a little dead money on your books, but a couple teams nearly did it in 2016/17 — the Jazz and Raptors each finished the regular season with less than $300K in dead money on their respective caps. Conversely, the Sixers led the way with more than $23MM in dead money on their books for this season.
A large or small amount of dead money on a team’s cap doesn’t necessarily signal good or bad cap management, but it can reflect a club’s cap situation. For instance, the Trail Blazers didn’t carry much dead money on their cap this season, but that’s because they couldn’t afford to — Portland finished the year less than $5K away from the tax line, so waiving anyone and adding to that dead money total could have created problems.
The Sixers, on the other hand, finished the season with plenty of cap room despite carrying more than $23MM in dead money. They were so far below the cap to start the year that they could afford to eat some salary and waive veterans like Andrew Bogut ($10.5MM+) and Carl Landry ($6.5MM) in order to add young players, without it hurting their bottom line.
While correlation doesn’t necessarily equal causation, it’s worth noting that only one of this year’s playoff teams (Indiana) was in the top 12 in the NBA in terms of dead money. Of the 18 teams that carried the least dead money, 15 made the postseason.
Listed below are the dead money figures on NBA teams’ caps in 2016/17. For more details on how these salaries break down, be sure to check out our Salary Cap Snapshots for ’16/17.
Most 2016/17 dead money by NBA team:
- Philadelphia 76ers: $23,486,925
- Brooklyn Nets: $17,986,178
- Phoenix Suns: $12,533,729
- Dallas Mavericks: $11,497,934
- Minnesota Timberwolves: $10,111,402
- Los Angeles Lakers: $8,564,524
- Indiana Pacers: $8,387,667
- Sacramento Kings: $7,807,829
- New Orleans Pelicans: $6,697,399
- New York Knicks: $6,017,749
- Detroit Pistons: $5,398,678
- Miami Heat: $5,296,896
- Oklahoma City Thunder: $4,358,585
- Denver Nuggets: $4,165,795
- San Antonio Spurs: $3,505,381
- Houston Rockets: $3,430,160
- Milwaukee Bucks: $3,128,117
- Atlanta Hawks: $2,634,954
- Memphis Grizzlies: $2,614,263
- Golden State Warriors: $2,473,745
- Portland Trail Blazers: $1,984,005
- Charlotte Hornets: $1,837,499
- Orlando Magic: $1,701,127
- Washington Wizards: $1,551,805
- Boston Celtics: $1,550,240
- Cleveland Cavaliers: $1,458,181
- Los Angeles Clippers: $1,412,964
- Chicago Bulls: $494,500
- Utah Jazz: $275,000
- Toronto Raptors: $206,500
Note: These figures are not official, but are based on reliable salary data from The Vertical and Basketball Insiders, as well as our own data.
Dead Money, such a morbid term…. how about “2016/17 Andrew Bynum by Team”