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Originally posted by Dr. Evil:
What depth?

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Originally posted by Vegas Piston:
It will be interesting to see what happens with the front court - I do feel that we have to make at least one more move to make this a contending team especially considering we must go through Dwight Howard or Shaq next season!

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Originally posted by MasterBigShot:

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Originally posted by swift_carlos:


Cant the Team pay the luxury tax to keep them? Im always confused by this cap stuff. The best thing about keeping them, is avoiding someone else have them...

Unfortunately, we can'at do that either. You can only go over the salary cap to sign players if you own their Bird Rights (i.e. if they've played 3 consecutive years with your team). In order to free up all this cap space, we had to renounce our Bird Rights to Rasheed Wallace, so we can no longer go over the salary cap to resign him. When McDyess was bought out of his contract last season by Denver, he also lost his Bird rights. So we can not go over the salary cap to sign Sheed, Dyess, or any other player for that matter.

It sucks, but the CBA was actually written with this situation in mind. The league has actually has a vested interested in assuring that one team doesn't get too strong or dominant, which is why they instituted this rule. Otherwise, a smart team could arrange for all of their players to sign contracts that end the same year. Let's say this hypothetical team was a very good, perienial title contender (ala Denver or Dallas or SA or somebody). After all their players' contracts expired, they would have $0 in committed salary, or ~$60M in cap space. They could use all that cap space to sign a bunch of marquee players (At least 3 ala Kobe, Lebron, KG, Duncan, D-Wade, etc...), and then exercise the Bird Rights they they held on their original players to sign back their original team, which, according to our example, was already a contender. Imagine adding 3 All-NBA first team players to any contender (Denver, Dallas, SA) and you've got yourself a dynasty. Granted the team would be paying a boatload in luxury taxes, but they'd have the best team in the league, hands down.

The CBA prevents teams from doing this because the NBA thinks it would be unfair for some wealthier teams to just buy up all the good players regardless of the salary cap & luxury tax levels. So you have to choose: Resign your own players with their Bird rights, or renounce your bird rights to those players and sign FA. Dumars elected to do the latter.