A question for you capologists

[cepstrum]

Can a team offer a contract like the following:

A six year deal with 24 mill guaranteed, but with huge incentives if the player averages 2 pts a game or something like that. This way only approximately 4 mill goes towards the cap, but the player gets his money by averaging 2 pts a game.

I know that players may not want to do this because of injuries and such, but is it legal.

 

[elindholm]

Performance bonuses (incentives) are allowed, but they are limited to 25% of the value of the contract. This removes yet another loophole that teams tried to use in the past.

Incentives are included in team salary if they are "likely to be achieved." They do not count if they are not likely to be achieved. (Except in the first year of the contract, where the salary, likely bonuses and unlikely bonuses must all fit within the salary cap or exception.) The league office determines what is likely and what is not. Their general guideline is whether the criteria was achieved in the previous year. For example, if a player had seven assists per game the previous season, then an incentive based on seven assists per game would probably be classified as "likely to be achieved," but an incentive based on eight assists per game would probably be classified as "not likely to be achieved."

If a player is traded, his incentives are re-evaluated. For example, a bad team may have a player with an incentive based on the team winning 41 games, that the league classifies as "not likely to be achieved." If that player is traded to a contending team, the league may reclassify the incentive as "likely to be achieved" and include the incentive in the new team's team salary. An interesting case of this happened when Miami tried to sign Juwan Howard. Tim Hardaway had some incentive clauses in his contract that were classified as "not likely to be achieved," and hence wasn't included in the Heat's team salary. However, the league ruled that if Juwan Howard joined the team, then Hardaway's incentives would be "likely to be achieved," and therefore, when computing the amount of cap room Miami had available to offer Howard, they must count Hardaway's incentives as likely.

http://members.cox.net/lmcoon/salarycap.htm#59