Marcin Gortat's contract will escalate, according to report

Some of you have asked how Marcin Gortat's five-year, $60 million contract will be structured. Noted salary-cap expert Mark Deeks of Sham Sports (and SB Nation) has given us the answer: it will rise over the course of the deal rather than decline or stay flat.

Gortat's contract with the Wizards goes up the maximum amount every year and is worth $13,565,218 in 2018/19. Ouch.

— Mark Deeks (@MarkDeeksNBA) July 10, 2014

There are very specific rules regarding this issue. Teams cannot raise or decline a salary by more than 7.5 percent over the first year for the duration of the deal. After some basic reverse engineering, this is what appears to be the rough structure of Gortat's deal, give or take a hundred thousand dollars or so:

2014-15: 10.4 million

2015-16: $11.2 million

2016-17: $12 million

2017-18: $12.74 million

2018-19: 13.5 million

This shouldn't surprise anyone because this is generally how contracts are structured, with a few exceptions. The benefit to structuring the contract this way is that it gives the Wizards more breathing room under the luxury tax this year, which will especially come in handy in filling out the roster if they keep Trevor Ariza.

The downside, of course, is that it means Gortat will make a ton of money when he's 35. The hope is that the projected rise in the salary cap mitigates that amount somewhat.