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: