No, it isn't all the same when talking about the cash element. It is altogether too easy for the owner to direct the GM to sign deals in the FA market that are all front heavy every season, so he can say "Oh man, we can only afford one or two guys because, look, our cap is used up!" rather than be creative and sign more players because you have to make more of a cash outlay. It's really not hard to understand the difference between creative cap accounting/spending more cash and purposefully burning cap space so you don't have to put out a bigger cash outlay. It's very straightforward and pretending an owner can't be cheap is disingenuous in the extremis.