After five years of ups and downs with five teams, at the age of 33, Mo Williams returned to the Cavaliers where he made his first and only All-Star Game. Not only did he reunite with LeBron James, he also played the role of professional mentor and spiritual leader of the team, winning the championship with the team last year.
It’s just that the tone of the beautiful story has completely changed after a year.
After Mo-Will exercised his option on the last year of his contract and chose to stay with the team, he fell out with the team due to disagreements over the treatment of his knee injury. A veteran hero turned into a bad salary debt, and a contract farce unfolded that neither team could have expected.
Picked up again and again, four teams in half a season
On January 8, in order to obtain the Cavaliers' 2019 first-round pick, the Hawks not only gave up Kyle Korver, but also accepted the contract of Mo Williams.
On January 19, the Eagles, whose room for reinforcements reached their limit, needed to use the gold nuggets to meet the "lower limit" of salary requirements. Send Mo Williams to Denver along with a processing fee in exchange for the rights to Cenk Akyol and a $2.2 million trade exception to help strengthen the team. Mo Williams was subsequently waived that day.
On January 21, Cheng Yaojin, who specializes in dealing with salary limits, went out to the 76ers and picked up Mo Williams from the waiver list. After putting his salary in his team's salary space, he waived Mo again one day later.
On January 24, the Nuggets picked up Mo Williams again.
What else are they going to rob?
Take a chance without being fined.
According to the provisions of the collective bargaining agreement, in addition to a salary ceiling that checks and balances "the rich are the boss", each team also has a salary floor that punishes "whatever happens, I just want to cost down". The former is to avoid the imbalance of the league's strength due to the wealthy Hengqiang, while the latter not only protects players' rights to find jobs, but also prevents late-stage teams from spending bad seasons with Development League-level lineups.
This year, when salary space is rising, in addition to the gorgeous free market with maximum salary fireworks, there are also many teams in the league whose total salary is lower than the minimum salary limit (the minimum salary limit is calculated as the upper limit of 90 %).
Even though he has little chance to play this season due to surgery, Mo Williams's 2.2 million contract is still coveted by the team. According to regulations, as long as the player is not picked up by another team after the transfer period, the original contract "must" be calculated into the salary space, and the team only needs to amortize the salary.
The burden under the original normal salary structure has instead become a loophole for teams below the salary limit to reduce fines. Compared to summer vacation 2015 Luke Ridnour In the six days and five teams, the process and behavior of losing and picking up gold nuggets can be called a farce. Although it didn't have much impact on me, it made the end of Mo Williams' career even more embarrassing.
How long will it take to play?
The roster is officially full as the Sixers offered Chasson Randle a 10-day contract. However, the Nuggets, who currently have Mo Williams, are about to face the problem of lineup space for Alonzo Gee's second 10-day contract. Will there be another Cheng Yaojin from Brooklyn? We can only keep watching.
Fortunately, the new version of the collective bargaining agreement has eliminated this loophole. The calculation of the future salary limit must be calculated based on the number of players actually working on the team.
Enjoy this contract drama! This should be the last time.
