Amar'e Stoudemire remains the highest-paid #Knicks player, but question is how much play does he have left? More:Stoudemire will make $21,679,893 this coming season, which is slightly higher than Carmelo Anthony's $21,490,000 salary. The difference in value between the two seems so much greater mainly because Melo is coming off a season in which he was an MVP candidate and the NBA's scoring champ, while Stoudemire had surgery on both knees and the indications are his minutes will now be limited.
How do the Knicks maximize Stoudemire's value? Let's accept one reality: with two years and $45,090,881 left on his uninsured deal, they won't be trading it this summer.
Perhaps next summer, when it is a large expiring contract, there will be some interest. But for now, the Knicks have to believe Stoudemire will be on their roster for the coming season. Can he give them something in a 25-minute-per-game cap to preserve his knees and still be effective?
The Knicks do have one option if they don't want to wait until next summer: the stretch provision.
This allows a team to waive a player and stretch the buyout over a period of time. If the Knicks waive Stoudemire between July 1 and August 1, they can stretch his buyout over two times the remaining years, plus one. So that means they would turn his $21 million cap hit this season and next into $9 million per over five years.
Immediately, that saves them $12.6 million against the cap, which won't get them under it. However, it would get them under the luxury tax apron, which would allow them to execute a sign-and-trade for a free agent. It could also allow them to use the full mid-level exception ($5 million per), rather than the taxpayer's mid-level.
All of this, of course, depends on what they do with their own free agents, mainly J.R. Smith.
Using the stretch comes with a price, of course. First and foremost, you give up a key player who, when healthy, can help. What if he comes back strong this season, signs with, say, the Heat for the veteran's minimum and wins a ring as an impact reserve?
It's a gamble, for sure.
It's also a mortgage on your payroll going forward, as the team will have $9M of cap space eaten up by Stoudemire through the 2017-18 season, long after Stoudemire is gone. If they endure one more year, they can trade him as an expiring or let his contract melt away for a huge amount of cap space in 2015.
So what is the smarter move here? Do you wait the season, see what Amar'e can do and consider your options with him as an expiring next summer? Or do you waive/stretch him now? 29
That is tough. I almost think you bite the bullet and let him expire. If he clears waivers and then is signed by another team to a contract does the money they pay him go back to the Knicks like it would with an amnestied player(I think that is how it works with amnestied guys)?
6/30/2013 11:50 AM