All this talk of a possible upcoming exception for LJ's possible retirement leads me to think only one thing. Would it not be wiser to have him sit on the bench all season... then have him retire after the season is over, effectively giving us more money to sign free agents from next year's pool. There is noone worth using that exception on this year except Mason, and his position is already cluttered on our roster... Thoughts???

I agree that there are no real free agents out there that could help the Knicks, but LJ doesn't have to sit the bench the entire year.

From Larry Coon's site:
If the player is disabled between December 1 and June 30, and the physician determines that the player will be out the entire following season as well, then the team has until October 1 to sign a replacement.

So the Knicks wait until December 1st to have LJ declared injured, and gets the exception to be used before Oct 1st of next year. Hopefully this is what Knick management is doing, and then NBA goes along with it.

I believe the definition of the exception is 50% of the salary, or 108% of the average salary in the NBA, whichever is less. The 108% figure is what is used to calculate the mid level exception as well, so unfortunatly the medical exception could never be greater than the mid level exception.

Posted by knicksbabyyeah:

But if the exception would be above 4.5 it would come in real handy next season for uotbidding others who will use the 4.5 exception.