Pandemic adjustments could impact Martin contract, luxury-tax approach
ORLANDO — The very mechanisms that could solve the Miami Heat’s riddle with forward Caleb Martin also could torpedo the planning that created the bind in the first place.
As the NBA considers adjustments to operational rules in the wake of numerous players entering health-and-safety protocols, a league executive told the South Florida Sun Sentinel he could foresee the NBA removing the limitations on the number of games two-way players can appear in this season, similar to such adjustments the past two pandemic-impacted seasons.
Under current limitations on two-way contracts, Martin is limited to 50 games on the Heat’s active roster, whether he sees action or not, with the rest of the time designated to be spent inactive or in the G League. Martin utilized 24 of those games before placed in heath-and-safety protocols last week.
Among the reasons the Heat have remained with a 14-player roster, maintaining Martin on a two-way contract, is to stay below the NBA’s luxury-tax threshold.
Such maneuvering has positioned the Heat to both slow the clock on the onerous repeater tax for teams routinely in the tax, and also leave the team eligible to collect on the season-ending overage from taxpaying teams, which currently projects to be in excess of $10 million for non-tax teams.
However, should the Heat wind up with several players concurrently in protocols, as has been the case recently for teams such as the Chicago Bulls, Brooklyn Nets, Sacramento Kings, New York Knicks, Los Angeles Lakers, Minnesota Timberwolves and Friday night’s Heat opponent, the Orlando Magic, then teams are mandated to carry at least eight active players through the use of emergency 10-day contracts.
With the Heat, according to a party familiar with the team’s accounting, currently $166,000 below the tax line, the addition of even two such players, with such contracts paying roughly $95,000, would put the Heat into the tax.
Among players currently on such emergency contracts are NBA veterans Langston Galloway and James Ennis with the Nets and Isaiah Thomas with the Lakers.
As with the pandemic-impacted deliberations with two-way players, the league also could ease the cap and tax burdens on teams forced into such emergency signings.
Even without protocol-related absences beyond Martin, the Heat went into Friday night’s game against at the Amway Center potentially with as few as nine available players due to nagging injuries to Tyler Herro and Omer Yurtseven, and the ongoing absences of Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, Markieff Morris and Victor Oladipo.
Should the Heat be forced into the tax by pandemic-related reasons, there still would be time to shed salary ahead of the Feb. 10 NBA trading deadline or March 1 NBA buyout deadline. Otherwise, the Heat might not stand as reluctant to reach that standard roster limit of 15.
Of more immediate impact, Friday stood as the deadline for all NBA players to either receive vaccine boosters or enter the same protocols as unvaccinated players.
The Heat are believed to be both fully vaccinated and fully boosted.
The league late Thursday also issued an updated memo that mandated a more rigorous return to testing, including game-day testing.
As for a potential change to limitations on two-way contracts, it would be similar to the allowances the league made when Gabe Vincent and Kyle Alexander were allowed to play without restriction on two-way contracts in the 2020 quarantine bubble at Disney World through those playoffs, and the allowance made for Vincent and Max Strus to play on two-way contracts last season without a game limitations. Vincent and Strus since have been signed to standard deals.
Should such allowances with two-way contracts come into play, they also would cover undrafted rookie guard Marcus Garrett, the Heat’s other player under two-way contract.