NBA Amnesty Clause: Best Amnesty Targets

The rules of the new CBA make my prior analysis of the amnesty clause mostly moot. As detailed in my last post, the new rules place a greater emphasis on saving the amnesty cut rather than using it right away. The amnesty provision is best used in order to either (1) clear cap space to make a free agent signing or (2) get under the luxury tax line--thus saving money and taking advantage of the rules favorable to teams under the tax line. Enough of the theorizing, what decision should each team make?

NBA Amnesty Clause Revisited

With the outline of the new NBA Collective Bargaining Agreement agreed to here's another look at which teams should amnesty which players. The new amnesty rules are:

• Each team can waive one player currently on the team and under contract prior to any season. It can be used only one time but can be used in any of the next six years of the CBA. The player must have been on that team's roster when the CBA was agreed to (ie you cannot trade for a player and then amnesty him or sign a new player and then amnesty him in a few years).
• The amnesty'd player's entire salary does not count against the Luxury Tax or the Salary Cap. The team still must pay the player's entire salary.

In my next post I will get into which teams should cut which players and which teams should save their amnesty option for a later date. This post will discuss why teams would want to amnesty a player. Reasons to amnesty a player:

Survivor Odds

The TV show Survivor: South Pacific had a probability problem last night. The two tribes merged, meaning that the game shifted from two separate tribes into one individual tribe. However the tribes each had six members at the merge and appeared to be headed to a tie vote. The six members of Savaii tribe would vote for one of the Upolu members to leave the game and vice versa. The problem gets a little more interesting when the threat of hidden immunity idols, challenge idols, and the tie breaking rules of Survivor are considered.

Podcasts I Like

For some reason, someone decided to follow my music recommendations on GrooveShark.com. I guess if someone is going to listen to my music I might as well make some podcast recommendations too. I'll rank them in order of my personal enjoyment.

First Thoughts The Challenge: Rivals

I have yet to outgrow my odd fascination with the MTV reality/game show The Challenge, thus I must blog and analyze the silly show. The newest season premiered last week. Teams compete in challenges for money and prizes while trying to avoid being eliminated from the show. This season the twist is that the teams are made up of two "rivals" who dislike each other for some reason. I'll summarize the rules briefly and give my thoughts on optimal strategy in this post.

NBA Amnesty Clause: Worst Contracts

If the NBA Amnesty Clause is to be re-enacted, the NBA owners and players' union have to agree to it. I believe the players would largely be in favor of it. Eliminated contracts still get paid in full and teams would then have more money to spend; either from having more salary cap room or from not having to pay luxury tax. However there are many NBA teams that would not benefit from the Amnesty Clause. The following 10 teams hardly stand to benefit from the Amnesty Clause: Boston Celtics, New York Knicks, Toronto Raptors, Indiana Pacers, Chicago Bulls, Miami Heat, Houston Rockets, Memphis Grizzlies, Oklahoma City, Sacramento Kings. I doubt the owners of those 10 teams would like to see the Amnesty Clause enacted. If those teams agree to the Amnesty Clause they would be agreeing to give their opponents a large competitive advantage. Also, if the luxury tax remains those teams receiving luxury tax money would stand to earn even less money if the teams over the cap could cut some of their luxury tax causing contracts.

*Clever Segway*. Here are the top 5 best uses of the Amnesty Clause:

5. Travis Outlaw, New Jersey Nets. 3 years and $21m remaining on his contract. The dollar amount is small compared to some of the other potential targets, but Outlaw has been awful these past two seasons (under 1 WS each season, 8.8 PER last year).

4. Rashard Lewis, Washington Wizards. 2 years and $46m remaining on his contract. Yes, he only has 2 years remaining on his deal but $46m for his lack of production on a rebuilding team is a ridiculous waste of cap space.

3. Ben Gordon, Detroit Pistons. 3 years and $37m remaining on his contract. I am not a huge fan of volume scorers and neither is PER or WS. If Detroit cuts Gordon's deal and trades Richard Hamilton, then the Pistons could get a great start on rebuilding.

2. Brandon Roy, Portland Trailblazers. 3 years and $49m remaining on his contract. Not Roy's fault as his pre-knee injury play was deserving of this contract. After multiple surgeries and the scary rumors about the condition of his knees, the Trailblazers could use the Amnesty Clause to move on.

1. Gilbert Arenas, Orlando Magic. 3 years and $62m remaining on his contract. Arenas has been awful since his knee injuries and arrest on gun charges. If the Magic jettison him and move another deal in a trade, they could have some cap space.

Honorable Mentions: Brandon Heywood, Dallas Mavericks (4 years, $35m), Richard Jefferson, San Antonio Spurs ( 3 years, $30m). Cutting either deal could give these contending teams a chance to reload for another title run.

NBA Amnesty Clause: Atlantic & Central Divisions

Wrapping up hypothetical targets of the NBA Amnesty, clause let's take a look at the Atlantic and Central Divisions. For some background see my original post on the clause.

NBA Amnesty Clause: Southeast Division

Next up for discussion, the contracts of the Southeast Division. See my first post on the Amnesty Clause for a little background.

NBA Amnesty Clause: Southwest Division

The analysis of a potential NBA Amnesty Clause now turns to the Western Conference Southwest Division. See my first post on this for some background. Basically I am looking for the worst contract on each team, with "worst" being decided by criteria particular to what the Amnesty Clause will likely be.

NBA Amnesty Clause: Northwest Division

Continuing the analysis of the Amnesty Clause on NBA contracts, which contracts in the Northwest Division are most fitting for elimination?

NBA Amnesty Clause

The current Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) between the NBA and the NBA Players' Union is set to expire this year. There has been talk of a new agreement including an Amnesty Clause like the last CBA did. The last amnesty provision allowed teams to eliminate one contract. The teams still had to pay the entire amount on the contract and the contract still counted against the salary cap. The benefit to the team is that the salary no longer counted towards the luxury tax. The luxury tax in the NBA is a penalty for team salaries that are too high. If the team salary is above the luxury tax line, the team has to pay a $1 tax for each $1 it is above the tax line. Using the Amnesty Clause a team could eliminate a $20m contract from their luxury tax calculations and save $20m. If the NBA brings back the Amnesty Clause, which player contracts are the likeliest targets?

More Memory Game

This post is an attempt to answer the question I posed in a prior post about the Memory Game. If you are not familiar with the Memory Game, you can read that post to get familiar with the rules and terminology. The question:

With the second part of your turn, if you do not have a 100% chance of getting a pair is it better to flip an already known tile or try to flip an unknown tile?

As I explained in my prior post on Memory, there are two ways to score. The first method of scoring is to flip over your first tile and already know the position of its match on the board. The second method of scoring is to flip over your first tile, not know the position of its match, and then randomly guess and find its match. My question asks should you forgo the second method of scoring pairs? 

Memory Game

In the seventh episode of this season (22nd) of Survivor, two contestants played the Memory Game to see who would remain on the show. In the Memory Game you score points by flipping over pairs of the same card. Whoever identifies the most pairs wins. The Survivor version had 20 tiles (10 unique pairs) laid face down. The contestants took turns flipping over two tiles per turn. If you flipped over identical tiles (a pair) you received a point and those two tiles were removed from the game. If the contestant flipped over non-identical tiles, the tiles were returned to their face down position. The players alternated turns regardless of whether they scored a pair or not. First to get five pairs won the game. Watching the game, I had two questions:

1. Is it better to go first or second?
2. With the second part of your turn, if you do not have a 100% chance of getting a pair is it better to flip an already known tile or try to flip an unknown tile?

NBA Salary Commitments

As I sit around killing time until I can play some pick up basketball at the park, I'm taking a look at the salary data available at HoopsHype.com.  NBA salaries amuse.  Every year we get to see the winner's curse in action.  They gave how much to Joe Johnson?  Why on earth would you sign Hedo Turkoglu to a five year deal (and how the heck was he traded twice within the first 18 months of his contract)?  I took a look at each team and made some tables and graphs of each team's salary commitment.

More Fangraphs.com Org Rankings

To see the data in spreadsheet form, click here. You can see how teams changed in versus last years ranking and where they scored in each of the four component categories. Toronto, San Fransisco, Cincinatti, and the White Sox moved up 10 or more places while Milwaukee, Seattle, Cleveland, and Arizona were the big downgrades. I didn't like how Future Talent was compiled and have some reservations about Financial Resources  (perhaps a topic for another post).

Fangraphs.com Organization Rankings -- Star Plots

Fangraphs.com has an annual series of posts where they rank each Major League Baseball organization on the following criteria: Present Talent (30%), Financial Resources (30%), Baseball Operations (25%), and Future Talent (15%). The writers grade each team in each of the categories probably on a scale of 1-100 (I believe; no ranking is below 62 or above 95). I took the rankings for each category and made some star plots.