Hoops Rumors Originals

Every Sunday at Hoops Rumors, we publish a pair of features that rely on input and submissions from our readers. One is our Weekly Mailbag, in which Arthur Hill answers a few questions related to the latest news and rumors from around the NBA. The second is our Hoops Links feature, which showcases a selection of notable NBA blog entries from all over the internet. In each instance, the content for those features comes from you.

Have a question regarding player movement, free agent rumors, the salary cap, the NBA draft, or the top storylines of the week? You can email them here for consideration for our Weekly Mailbag: hoopsrumorsmailbag@gmail.com. If your question doesn’t get selected for our mailbag, be sure to join us on Monday afternoons for our weekly live chats — our chats will resume after the regular season ends, as we begin to look ahead to the summer in earnest.

Got a new NBA blog post that you’d like to see featured on Hoops Rumors? You can send the URL and a brief description of the piece to hoopslinks@gmail.com for consideration.

Be sure to send us your new mailbag questions and NBA blog posts each week, and check back every Sunday to see if you’ve been featured in that week’s installment!

Every week, the Hoops Rumors writing team compiles original content to complement our news feed. Here are some of our favorite segments and features from the past seven days:

• Luke Adams broke down the maximum salaries that players of varying experience can command under the new Collective Bargaining Agreement.
• Hawks swingman Kent Bazemore and Jazz guard Rodney Hood are a couple of under-the-radar players who could help your fantasy team. Chris Crouse dishes out expert advice in his weekly fantasy column.
• The Celtics are not only in position to nab the No. 1 seed in the East, they could make moves this offseason to become a perennial powerhouse. Arthur Hill explains why that could occur in his Weekly Sunday Mailbag. For details on how to submit a question for our next mailbag, click here.
• We keep track of every 10-day contract signed this season. Get all the details here on how to search our database.
• In our weekly Hoops Links roundup of interesting articles from around the blogosphere, Chris Crouse passed along pieces on Draymond Green, LeBron James, P.J. Tucker, and more. For details on how to submit a blog entry for consideration in our next installment of Hoops Links, click here.

Here are the questions we asked you in our Community Shootaround discussions and polls this week:

• Do you think the Nuggets hold onto the eighth seed and make the playoffs?
• Should the Bulls bring back Rajon Rondo and Nikola Mirotic next season or should they look for other players to fill those roles?
• We polled our readers on this hot topic: Who is the best point guard in this year’s draft?

With the NBA set to implement a new Collective Bargaining Agreement for the 2017/18 season, a number of aspects of the CBA will be tweaked, or will change significantly. The maximum salary contract is one thing that falls into the former category — it’ll look a little different starting this summer, but the changes are minor.

For instance, under the current CBA, maximum salary tiers are divided based on a player’s years of NBA experience. Players with six or fewer years under their belts can get up to about 25% of the cap, players who have played between seven and nine years can get up to about 30% of the cap, and veterans who have played 10+ years are eligible to sign for about 35% of the cap. The new CBA will keep those divisions in place, and actually simplify them a little — the percentages are no longer approximate. A player with 10+ years of experience will be able to sign for up to exactly 35% of the cap.

In the new CBA, players with 10 or more years of experience won’t be the only players whose maximum salaries can be worth up to 35% of the cap. There will also be designated veteran extensions available for players entering their eighth or ninth NBA seasons. If that player signed a rookie-scale extension, is still with the team that signed him to that extension, and earned All-NBA honors in the previous season (or in two of the last three years), he’s eligible to get up to 35% of the cap instead of his allotted 30%.

This new rule made the DeMarcus Cousins trade last month an interesting one. If he had remained in Sacramento, Cousins would have been eligible for a designated veteran extension with the Kings, since he met the criteria listed above. However, with the Pelicans, he’s only eligible to sign a deal worth up to 30% of the cap until he has 10 NBA seasons under his belt.

Outside of those changes, there’s one more minor tweak worth noting. Previously, players who signed max deals with their own team were eligible for 7.5% annual raises, as opposed to 4.5% annual raises if they were to sign with a new team in free agency. Under the new CBA, those max raises have been bumped up a little, to 8% and 5% respectively. Players are still limited to four new years on a contract with a new team, as opposed to five years with their current team.

Keeping all that in mind, let’s dive in and take a look at what a maximum salary contract might look like this summer. At this point, we can only rely on salary cap projections provided by the NBA, since the exact cap figure for 2017/18 won’t be known until the summer.

At last check, the league was calling for a $102MM cap for the 2017/18 season. Using that tentative figure, here’s what maximum salary contracts would look like in ’17/18:

A player re-signing with his own team (8% annual raises, up to five years):

A player signing with a new team (5% annual raises, up to four years):

A year ago, Mike Conley set a new NBA record when he signed a five-year contract that exceeded $152MM. This time around, a handful of players could break that record again. Stephen Curry will qualify for a designated player extension and Chris Paul, who has played for more than a decade, may also be seeking a five-year, maximum-salary deal. As our charts above show, both players would be eligible for five-year contracts exceeding $207MM if they remain with their current teams.

Meanwhile, a player like Gordon Hayward has a number of potential contract scenarios in play. If he doesn’t earn an All-NBA spot, his decision will be clearer — he could get up to four years and $131.58MM with a new team, or up to five years and $177.48MM with the Jazz, assuming Utah is willing to go that high. If Hayward is named to an All-NBA team, he’d have the option of exercising his player option and seeking a designated veteran extension with the Jazz, which would begin in 2018/19 — with the cap expected to rise again next year, such an extension would likely be worth even more than the $207.06MM noted above.

For the last few months, NBA teams have been eligible to sign free agents to 10-day contracts, and many of the signings that have taken place during that span have been of the 10-day variety. Hoops Rumors has created a database that allows you to keep on top of those deals, tracking every 10-day signing all season long. So far, 35 different players have signed at least one 10-day contract in 2017.

Our 10-Day Contract Tracker includes information on all 10-day contracts signed from the 2006/07 season on, giving you a chance to identify trends regarding your favorite teams and players. The search filters in the database make it easy to sort by team, player and year. Just be sure to write a player’s last name first if searching in that field. You can also see whether a player and team signed a second 10-day contract, and if the short-term deals led to an agreement that covered the rest of the season.

For instance, if you want to see how many 10-day deals current Hornets guard Briante Weber has signed over the course of his career, you can find that information here. Similarly, if you want to see all the 10-day contracts that the Mavericks have signed in recent years, you can do so here.

A newly-added feature also allows you to see which 10-day contracts are active — players whose 10-day deals haven’t expired are marked with an asterisk in our tracker. At the moment, Manny Harris (Mavs), Jarrod Uthoff (Mavs), Archie Goodwin (Nets), Jarell Eddie (Suns), and Quinn Cook (Pelicans) are on active 10-day contracts.

A link to our 10-Day Contract Tracker can be found at any time in the Tools menu at the top of the page, or in the right sidebar under “Hoops Rumors Features.” We’ll be keeping it up to date for the rest of the season, so be sure to check back to keep tabs on the latest signings as they become official.