The Pacers agreed to sign Monta Ellis to a four-year, $44 million contract.
They also traded Roy Hibbert to the Lakers and agreed to sign Lavoy Allen, Rodney Stuckey and Jordan Hill.
Somewhere along the way, they made a mistake.
Zach Lowe of Grantland:
Cap minutia: league has temporarily disallowed Monta Ellis's contract w/ Pacers; team ran out of room, just has to re-order transactions.
— Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) July 17, 2015
Repeat: Ellis will be a Pacer, nothing is amiss. Just thought it was fair, given DEN criticism, to point out this happens. Cap is complex.
— Zach Lowe (@ZachLowe_NBA) July 17, 2015
Former Nets general manager Bobby Marks:
As @ZachLowe_NBA reported re:Indiana. Trust me it happens more then you think. This one was just made public.
— Bobby Marks (@BobbyMarks42) July 17, 2015
It’s not clear where the Pacers messed up.
They signed second-round pick Joseph Young to a contract starting at $1,007,026, according to Basketball Insiders. Had they waited, they could have used the room exception and had Young count $0 against the cap in the meantime. (Update: As Nate Duncan helpfully pointed out, the room exception can be for just two years. So, the Pacers needed cap space to give Young this deal.)
It’s unknown how Allen’s three-year, $12 million contract is structured, but his lowest possible starting salary is $3,720,930. Until signed, his cap hold is/was $947,276.
It’s also unclear how the Pacers fix this issue – whether the NBA just lets them undo completed deals and the re-execute them in the proper order or whether they’ll have to change someone else’s deal. Ellis won’t be the casualty, but that doesn’t mean Indiana won’t pay some price for its error. (Or it might not. I’m unsure how forgiving the NBA is.)
This is different than the Kenneth Faried contract extension Lowe mentioned, because that was just plain illegal. There was no alternative order of events that would made that legal.
The Pacers’ problem is more of a bookkeeping issue, one that wouldn’t have affected anyone’s end result. I guess we’ll learn how seriously the NBA takes this.