Even the Good Teams Are Guilty of Cap Foibles

As nearly every New York basketball fan knows, you can't ignore the salary cap and still plan on winning. The story of the Knicks' recent history is full of cap-be-damned acquisitions that have bloated the payroll with little to show in the win column. But it's interesting to note that supposedly smart teams are often clueless when it comes to cap management, too.

San Antonio and Phoenix, two elite teams with comparably modest payrolls (of course compared to the Knicks, only the Yankees payroll is immodest), have made moves that show just as little discretion as the locals. The difference is in the lengths that these teams go to avoid paying the luxury tax, a penalty that kicks in on every payroll over the league standard, usually about $65 million.

The Knicks were hit with a $45 million luxury tax bill on Friday for their 2006-07 payroll. That same day, San Antonio made a move to ensure that they incur little or no tax next season. Ordinarily that would make the Spurs look smart, but consider the move. They traded the rights to Euroball star Luis Scola and young pivotman Jackie Butler to the Houston Rockets for Greek point guard Vassilis Spanoulis, a 2009 second-round draft choice, and cash.

The move probably sends the foreigners in different directions. Spanoulis clashed with former Rocket coach Jeff Van Gundy and sulked at the end of the Houston bench for most of the season. Even after Van Gundy was let go, he failed to change his tune and asked out of his contract. His agent foreshadowed the deal by announcing that his client could start for the Spurs, and he'd still rather return to Europe. Perhaps that illustrated the problem. Even if Tony Parker and Eva Longoria decide to take a yearlong honeymoon, Spanoulis was coming nowhere near the Spurs' starting lineup. And the Spurs will likely grant him his wish and use the cash obtained in the deal to buy him out.

Meanwhile, the Rockets made out like bandits. Scola has long been regarded as one of the best Euros waiting to get into the NBA. And he has not waited patiently. Drafted by the Spurs in 2002, Scola wanted in, but San Antonio refused to buy out his contract in the Spanish leagues. Frustrated, his agent said "in the country of liberty, my client is a prisoner."

If he's half as good at hoops as he is at playing the press, Scola will be a star, but he isn't the real steal. It's Butler. As Knicks' faithful know, Butler was one of the few memorable aspects of the Larry Brown debacle. A Development League find by team president Isiah Thomas, Butler averaged 15.8 points and 9.9 boards per 40 minutes of action. With the Knicks locked into centers Eddy Curry and Jerome James, the Spurs were able to slip in last summer and ink Butler to a threeyear, $8 million dollar deal that the Knicks chose not to match (if they had, their luxury tax bill would have been higher). However, Butler, at 6-foot-10-inches and 265 pounds on a good day, showed up out of shape for San Antonio and spent the year at the end of the bench. The trade to Houston, where he figures to get major minutes at the power forward spot, is his new lease on NBA life.

Although this trade seems to strengthen a key rival, the Spurs can be given a bit of leeway, as they are the NBA champions, and the move enables them to bring over any of several bigs that they have stashed away in Europe right now. It's hard to understand what gives in Phoenix where in the name of avoiding luxury tax penalties, the Suns have grown allergic to first round draft choices.

Since 2004, the Suns have traded the following first-round draft picks to other teams with little or nothing in return: Luol Deng (2004), Nate Robinson (2005), Sergio Rodriguez (2006), Rajon Rondo (2006), and Rudy Fernandez (2007).

Think you could sculpt a nice bench from that crowd? The sum total of the salaries of these players isn't much more than the $5 million a season, which the team is already paying guard Marcus Banks to sit at the end of their bench. The Suns have probably cost themselves one title, and maybe two, by avoiding adding a rookie salary or two.

The luxury tax is designed to prevent teams from spending their way to a title, and the Knicks are a perfect case study in the tax's effectiveness in that regard. However, teams closer to the threshold need to weigh the cost benefits. Certainly a million or two dollars in penalties would have been a small price to pay for the depth that could have brought a title to the desert. And next year, San Antonio may wonder if parting with two capable big men in order to save money cost them a shot at consecutive titles.