Are you talking about Monta Ellis or Vonteego Cummings here. Big Brother or not the kid will grow up.

They are probably waiting on Brand. If we signed Monta before Brand’s decision than we have to withdraw our offer. However, if Brand is signed first, than Monta can be taken care of easier.

A) it’s still the moratorium. We can’t sign anyone yet. No one can. Baron hasn’t signed anywhere. Brand hasn’t signed anywhere. No deals are legal yet. It’s all just in principle.

B) as soon as we sign Ellis, his new salary is on the books. Right now, he counts for a bit less than $1mil towards the cap. When he signs, that goes up, up, up. It eats away at the cap room we’ll have once Baron departs for the Clips. Signing him early would be S-T-U-P-I-D.

C) We can’t lose him if the team is willing to match. We retain his rights as a restricted free agent. The worst case scenario is somone else making an offer to Monta that he signs an offer sheet to because this puts him on our books immediately. See b) above.

Um… I thought Monta wanted more than 10 mil a year, while the are like WWAAAAAYYYYYY above the cap. They would need to trade all their bad contracts to get that much under the luxury tax.

Clear a little bit more room? Have you seen where they stand right now? They don’t have many moveable assets and they’re about 50mil above where they’ll need to be to make an offer for Monta. These rumors are all a product of the self importance of the NY tabloid papers and the drooling idiots who read and write the rags.

Baron is leaving town <> anything can happen.

because they’re already WAY above luxury cap, every new dollar they spend counts them another dollar in luxury tax. so to get Monta for $10MM, they’d have to actually spend 2x that ($20MM) per year, all told. not inconceivable, but big time money… unless they get the ONE game changer for their franchise, their top priority still has to be TRADING AWAY salary. or at least holding their breath until “star”bury goes away.

shes in jail….btw, just a thought if baron went home to LA, cant we convince gary payton to come home and play for us? HAHAHAHAHAHA and JR rider too!!!

Nah, If we were too lose Monta coupled with the failure to sign a big name, we shouldn’t be in the NBA. Drop us to the D-League or the PAC-10. Make my 4th of July and sign Monta right now. To see this all blow up the past week was enough.

This allows a team over the salary cap to sign one player up to a given amount, the mid-level. In other words, no big contract, just a medium-sized one.