After re-signing both Arenas and team captain Antawn Jamison this month, and adding backup point...

After re-signing both Arenas and team captain Antawn Jamison this month, and adding backup point guard Dee Brown, the Wizards are between $1 million and $1.5 million under the NBA luxury tax for the coming season.

Washington Times.

Huh? How did that happen? I thought we established that we had 3.4 million before signing Dee Brown. Where did all that money go?

If we knew we'd have this little under the tax, we might as well have kept Bill Walker.

over 3 years ago Mike Prada 7 comments 0 recs |

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Booo

by Unselds on Jul 14, 2008 10:33 AM EDT reply actions

Mike Jones

I’m really starting to like Mike Jones’s reporting, but I don’t think that he does his homework (yet) when it comes to league figures. Here is an excerpt from his Outlet blog article from July 1st:

And that’s why he will wait until the salary cap figures and luxury tax figures come out next Tuesday to decide what to sign for. The cap is expected to be somewhere around $58 million and the luxury tax could come out at about $69 million. The Wizards can go over the salary cap to sign players. But if they spend more than $69 million, they will have to pay dollar for dollar every dollar that they go over that luxury tax ceiling.

We all flipped out when we read that back then, but as we all know now, the luxury tax threshold is just over $71 million, not $69 million. Based on this, I will assume that our numbers are more accurate than his at this point.

"It's OK for the Bullets to trade baskets, as long as they can score on their end." -- Words of wisdom from Phil Chenier

by cuppettcj on Jul 14, 2008 10:42 AM EDT reply actions

Maybe

I’m firing off an e-mail to Jones asking for clarification. I’ll let you know what he says, so long as it’s okay with him.

You know you'll get devoured by Cheaney, Wallace, and Juwan Howard.

by Mike Prada on Jul 14, 2008 10:55 AM EDT up reply actions

His initial response

Don’t want to give too much away yet, since the convo is ongoing and I haven’t cleared anything with him, but he said he’s basically going by what he’s being told by his sources. He talked to them yesterday and that’s what they told him.

I’ll tell you more later if it’s alright with him, but for now, that’s all that’s been determined.

You know you'll get devoured by Cheaney, Wallace, and Juwan Howard.

by Mike Prada on Jul 14, 2008 3:45 PM EDT up reply actions

Agree 100%

“If we knew we’d have this little under the tax, we might as well have kept Bill Walker”

by LoneWiz54 on Jul 14, 2008 11:38 AM EDT reply actions

Nah

We never drafted Walker to keep him. We drafted him for Boston. I doubt Ernie wanted to hand Walker over to our medical staff. Ernie could have drafted a player he knew was going to play overseas for a few years (Sasha Kahn) and it wouldn’t have cost us a dollar.

by Jheiser3 on Jul 14, 2008 12:03 PM EDT up reply actions