Several NBA teams have renounced their unrestricted free agents, eliminating any form of Bird rights the team had on those players, per RealGM’s transactions log. Here’s a breakdown of which teams renounced their UFAs and what those moves might mean:
Los Angeles Clippers
- Players renounced: Alan Anderson, Jeff Ayres, Brandon Bass, Glen Davis, J.J. Redick, Hedo Turkoglu, and Ekpe Udoh.
- The thinking: Redick has a new deal in place elsewhere and the other players probably aren’t candidates to return. With a hard cap in place after signing-and-trading for Danilo Gallinari, the Clips will have to keep team salary below $125.266MM for the rest of the 2017/18 league year.
New York Knicks
- Players renounced: Ron Baker, Justin Holiday, Derrick Rose, and Sasha Vujacic.
- The thinking: The Knicks needed to clear cap room to fit in Tim Hardaway Jr.‘s offer sheet, so these moves aren’t really a surprise. The one interesting name is Baker — the club also withdrew its qualifying offer to him. He has reportedly agreed to a deal with New York already, but if the team doesn’t need his QO or FA rights to complete that signing, it may just end up being a two-year, minimum salary contract that could be finalized once the Knicks use up their cap room on other players.
Atlanta Hawks
- Players renounced: Jose Calderon, Kris Humphries, Ersan Ilyasova, Paul Millsap, and Thabo Sefolosha.
- The thinking: The Hawks kept cap holds for Hardaway and Mike Muscala on their books, but it appears none of the players noted above are in their plans going forward. Atlanta needed to clear its cap room to take on Jamal Crawford and Diamond Stone in a trade with the Clippers, so the Hawks also had to renounce their five trade exceptions as well.
Detroit Pistons
- Players renounced: Aron Baynes and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope.
- The thinking: With a $125.266MM hard cap now in place, the Pistons will have to keep team salary below that figure for the rest of the league year.
Brooklyn Nets
- Players renounced: K.J. McDaniels
- The thinking: McDaniels’ cap hold likely had to be eliminated from the books in order to fit Otto Porter‘s offer sheet.
Phoenix Suns
- Players renounced: Ronnie Price
- The thinking: I don’t see any obvious reason that the Suns needed to renounce Price’s minimum salary cap hold, but there’s no reason to keep it on the books either — if the team wants to eventually re-sign Price, it can use cap room or the minimum salary exception to do so.
Wouldn’t the thinking for the Pistons renouncing KCP was the recent acquisition of Bradley?
Well, that’s the reason they were willing to let him go, but even if they knew he wouldn’t be back, they could’ve kept his cap hold and maybe tried to do a sign-and-trade — if not for the hard cap.
Put more succinctly: I was generally looking at cap motivations here rather than roster motivations.
Yea he is gone with Bradley in there now, Pistons will likely re-sign Bradley.
The Clippers section really supplies no explanation, guys not being in a team’s plans is no reason to renounce them, if they are operating as a capped out team next offseason hey could have used one or more of those guys as outgoing salary in a trade.
My understanding is that team salary has to be under the $125.266MM hard cap, so they renounced enough to get under there and kept cap holds for guys that still, theoretically, could be useful (ie. Speights).
I don’t think the Clippers are technically hard capped. They have to be under the apron to complete the S&T, but afterwards, I think they’re free to go about their business.
Any team that does a sign-and-trade is hard-capped after that. Also looks like they committed more than the taxpayer MLE to Teodosic, so they’re doubly hard-capped, heh.
Per CBA FAQ, you must be below apron at the conclusion of the sign and trade, and you cannot use the taxpayer mle, which effectively prevents you from going over the apron, but in theory, it seems like you could still make future trades that pushed up and over the apron.
Here’s the relevant passage from CBA FAQ: “In other words, when a team is below the Apron and uses its Bi-Annual exception, receives a player who is signed-and-traded, or uses its Mid-Level exception to sign a player to a contract larger than allowed by the Taxpayer Mid-Level exception, the team becomes hard-capped at the Apron for the remainder of that season. This eliminates any potential loophole where a team could first use one of these exceptions and subsequently add salary to go above the Apron, since the reverse — adding salary first and then using the exception — would be illegal.”
Ah, okay. The section on Sign and trades, does not mention this, only that you would be “effectively” hard capped, since you lose access to most exceptions.
It’s curious reasoning, “eliminates potential loophole…since the reverse would be illegal” since order of operations is such big part of free agency every year.