Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Team can’t touch Waiters’ $1.2 million missed bonus
MIAMI — It could be argued that this is nothing more than a rich-people problem.
But here stand the Miami Heat with an extra $1.2 million in their pockets and they can’t touch it.
Can’t use it to upgrade their mix. Can’t use it to convert two-way forward Chris Silva to a standard NBA contract. Can’t use it for the team’s 15th roster spot that remains vacant.
With Wednesday night’s game against the Cleveland Cavaliers at AmericanAirlines Arena the Heat’s 13th of the season, it officially extinguishes the bonus in Dion Waiters’ contract for appearing in at least 70 games over the 82-game schedule.
As Waiters remains on a 10-game suspension for what the Heat have deemed “conduct detrimental to the team,” he has yet to appear in a game this season.
Yet even with that money no longer a debit on the Heat’s ledger, and even with the Heat too hard up against the hard cap to otherwise sign a player at the moment, the
Heat are not allowed to remove Waiters’ potential (and now unrealized) bonus until season’s end.
According to a party familiar with the process, part of the reasoning is to discourage teams from manipulating such matters in order to clear immediate salary flexibility. According to another, it protects the system against a player successfully winning an appeal and such a bonus eventually being reinstated.
Waiters’ suspension ends with the Nov. 29 game against the visiting Golden State Warriors, eligible to return for the Dec. 1 game against the Brooklyn Nets at Barclays Center. Should he return that night, the most appearances he could make for the Heat this season would be 64.
The Heat wound up hard capped because of utilizing a sign-and-trade agreement in order to acquire Jimmy Butler in July while operating significantly above the salary cap.
Waiters already has lost $913,000 of his $12.1 million salary due to his two suspensions, including being suspended for the
Oct. 23 season-opening victory over the Memphis Grizzlies, also for what the Heat deemed “conduct detrimental to the team.” His $1.2 million bonus, while factored into the hard cap, is not calculated into the Heat’s place against the luxury tax because he failed to make the 70-game threshold in the previous two seasons of his four-year, $52 million contract that runs through 2020-21.
The other major bonus on the Heat books calls for center Kelly Olynyk to receive a $1 million bonus for playing at least 1,700 minutes, a threshold he has reached each of the first two seasons on his four-year contract that also runs through 2020-21.
Like Waiters’ bonus, it will count toward the hard cap through the balance of the season, regardless if it potentially no longer be achieved. Unlike Waiters’ bonus, Olynyk’s currently counts against the luxury tax because it was achieved last season.
Olynyk entered Wednesday night’s game averaging 22.2 minutes per game, which would translate into 1,820 over the course of the 82-game schedule, should he appear in each game.