The Pistons have interest in adding C.J. Miles this offseason, a source tells Vince Ellis of the Detroit Free Press. Miles will reportedly opt out of his deal with the Pacers to become a free agent this summer.
Ellis cautions that any additions will depend on what happens with Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Reggie Bullock. Detroit already has nearly $95MM in guaranteed salary on the books for next season, so even if the team lets each one of its free agent wings walk, it won’t have much flexibility to add a sizable deal.
KCP and Bullock are both restricted free agents, so it’s likely coach/executive Stan Van Gundy opts to retain at least one of the two. If the team goes over the salary cap, which is projected to come in at $101MM, it will have the $8.4MM mid-level exception to work with and a new deal for Miles could fit into that slot. The swingman would have made roughly $4.77MM had he decided to stay on his deal with Indiana.
Miles, who spent the last three seasons with the Pacers, shot 43.4% from downtown on 8.5 attempts per contest last season. Detroit will certainly look to add shooting after making just 33.0% of its shots from behind the arc as a team last season, a figure which ranks 28th in the league.
If a team opens up cap space, but then signs an FA and goes back over the cap, does it get access to the additional exceptions that come with it or is there a deadline for the exception to be given to a team?
If a team uses cap room at any point during a league year, it’s not able to get the MLE or BAE back later (only scenario in which a team could use all of the above is if it used the exceptions first, then went under the cap later in the year).
So Boston can basically sign Hayward or Griffin or whoever to a max deal, or 2 lower tier guys for about $30 mil, and then they wouldn’t get the MLE or BAE to use after those signing(s)?
Right, they’d get the smaller room exception instead. (Smaller than the mid-level, that is. It’ll be bigger than the BAE).