Besides landing six players and five draft picks, the Magic also created a sizable traded player exception in today's Dwight Howard trade, according to GM Rob Hennigan. Josh Robbins of the Orlando Sentinel tweets that the trade exception is worth about $17.8MM. Here's how it was presumably created:
- The Magic used a portion of their Brandon Bass trade exception to absorb Maurice Harkless' $1,731,960 salary. There was $2.75MM left on the exception after the Magic used part of it to acquire Gustavo Ayon, so there should be a little over $1MM remaining on it now.
- Using the $4.35MM trade exception they acquired when they sent Ryan Anderson to New Orleans, the Magic were able to absorb Josh McRoberts' $3,135,000 salary along with Christian Eyenga's $1,174,080 salary.
- By packaging two outgoing pieces in Chris Duhon ($3,250,000), and Earl Clark ($1,240,000), the Magic were able to take back up to $6,835,000 in salary (150% of those two players' salaries, plus $100K). That was barely enough room for Al Harrington ($6,687,400).
- The Magic were also eligible to take back up to 150% of Jason Richardson's $5,799,625 salary. Arron Afflalo ($7,750,000) fits into that amount with room to spare.
- That leaves Howard's $19,536,360 as the only remaining outgoing salary, so the Magic have up to one year to take back that amount. They started by absorbing Nikola Vucevic ($1,719,480), leaving a total of $17,816,880 to use before August 10th, 2013.
For a more detailed explanation of how traded player exceptions work, be sure to check out our Hoops Rumors Glossary entry.
Makes perfect sense. Very well written, Luke. Thanks for the explanation! Very interesting!
Hopefully this TPE will be put to good use and we acquire some good talent especially a back up PG or a Center which is what we need right now.