I'm sure that there may be a simple answer-
So Lin visits Houston and is told by them that they are willing to offer him the kind of contract we've been hearing about- something like a $5M + $5M + $10M +$10M type of deal.
Now Lin knows that we are going to match this contract, and all things considered, I would think he wants to remain in NYC.
What is to keep him from contacting the Knicks about the total amount Houston will offer him BEFORE he officially accepts it (he may have accepted it already, I guess), and the Knicks promising him the same total amount, but giving it to him in a more even fashion, or even front loading it a bit, so that we don't incur the luxury tax?
Are there restriction on this? I don't really follow the cap related stuff, but it seems that if the Knicks and Lin both want each other, and Lin gets the same final amount, why wouldn't he be willing to work with the team on this, assuming it is possible?
Just wondering. I expect that I am missing something.
By the way- if we could have signed him in the beginning for much less, and did not because Grunwald wanted him to "set the market," I would think that this is a major mistake by our front office, whether or not we actually end up with him in the end, if we have to end up paying him about $10M more than we had to.
Take this with a grain of salt. The way the Early Bird exception works is we can offer a contract starting at a small increase of the average NBA salary from the previous season; I believe that is a little over $5M. We can than give that player yearly raises of 7.5% for an additional three (four, maybe?) seasons. So, the maximum amount of money we can offer is: Year 1 - $5M; Year 2 - $5.375M; Year 3 - $5.778M; Year 4 - $6.211M; Year 5(?)- $6.677M. That means we can offer, approximately, a maximum of $22M for four years or $29M over five years. I believe the amounts should be a little higher because the first year should be more than $5M.
Other teams are able to offer an Early Bird free agent a contract as well. If another team offers a contract, they are not allowed to offer more than us in the first two years of that contract. But, they can theoretically offer more in the 3rd and 4th years of a contract. It gets a little complicated from there but I'll try and explain. Let's say a team has $10M in cap space this offseason, normally they'd be able to offer Lin a 4 year contract starting at $10M with 4.5% raises every season. Let's keep it a little simpler and say they offer him $40M over four years with no raises. They still can't offer more than us in the first two years but, they can take $10M and subtract $5M in year one and $5.375M in year two and add it to years 3 and 4. So, the contract they can offer would be about $10M for the first two years, the same amount that we're allowed to offer, and then another $30M over the last two years. Basically, if another team has $10M in cap space this year they can still offer a 4 year $40M contract, it just has to be backloaded.
What this means for us is that the largest contract we can offer is about $22M for 4 years his first year salary is based off the the average NBA salary from last season. The maximum contract another team can offer is based off of the amount of cap space they have this offseason, with a few other restrictions regarding maximum salaries but that's not really important. But, because he's a restricted free agent, we're allowed to match any contract offer that Lin accepts. Also, we can't frontload any contract because we're over the cap and, because Lin is an Early Bird free agent he can't make more than what we can offer in the first two years of a contract. Uhm, I hope that clears things up for you. I'm usually better at explaining things in person than in writing.
