To exist as an NBA fan today means knowing the ins and outs and complications of the NBA's salary cap.
That is the cost for parity and a chance to compete. The NBA put in a salary cap both to try to keep control of costs and to ensure that every team has a chance to win a title.
It is vital, then, that everyone plays by the same rules. Everyone must have the same restrictions.
The league takes any violation of these rules extremely seriously -- just ask the Minnesota Timberwolves, who had five first-round picks stripped from them for an under-the-table deal with Joe Smith, a move that effectively killed any chance of Kevin Garnett winning with the franchise.
That is why the league is in a frenzy over the reporting from Pablo Torre for Pablo Torre Finds Out that the LA Clippers invested in a company with ties to Kawhi Leonard at the time they signed him in free agency, which Leonard essentially does nothing for. There are accusations that the Clippers are paying him beyond his salary and thus are paying him outside of the salary cap rules.
Cap circumvention is a serious thing. Any accusations of cap circumvention get the league up in a dander.
It can even be something small. Because there was one time when the Orlando Magic were accused of circumventing the cap over something very, very small and very, very simple.
And frankly, the whole accusation was ridiculous and the whole incident swept away as quickly as it came up.
Sometimes teams are trying to push the envelope. Other times, it is just silly.
The Magic got dinged for their community award
The Orlando Magic have given out the Rich and Helen DeVos Community Enrichment Award each year since the 1996 season. Paolo Banchero won the award last season. And it comes with a $20,000 donation to the winner's charity of choice in his name.
It sounds OK, right? The team is boosting a player's community efforts and kicking in some extra money to the charity of their choice.
In 2001, the NBA disagreed.
The league fined the Magic $15,000 for a $50,000 donation to Seniors First in Grant Hill's name after Hill won the Community Enrichment Award.
The league accused the Magic of circumventing the cap. Hill was on a max contract at the time and this was viewed as Hill getting extra money even if it ended up being a donation. Clearly the league did not feel it was such a competitive advantage that the team was only fined, but the point remained.
The Magic refused to pay.
"My first thought was, 'You have got to be kidding me.' It was almost laughable, in a way," then Magic executive Bob Vander Weide told the Orlando Sentinel (via an archived article from ESPN). "I was incredibly disappointed. We have no intention of paying this. And the league should know that."
As the article in ESPN noted, the award was selected by a community panel and the money never went directly to the player. It was merely donated to the charity of their choice in their name.
The league at the time called it a "minor issue" but still considered charitable contributions as adding value to the contract, and thus a violation of the league's rules.
Further adding to the frustration, the Magic were not called up for the award in previous seasons. And the league acknowledged the Magic may not have been aware they were breaking any rules.
The frustration and the disparity might have been that this was Hill's first season with the Magic after he was acquired in a sign-and-trade deal in the offseason. The Magic had a bold plan to acquire three free agents that summer, clearing massive amounts of cap room throughout the 2000 season before signing Grant Hill and Tracy McGrady to max contracts that summer (they missed out on Tim Duncan, which is another story).
The good news is the Magic have not been written up, at least publicly, for this since the incident in 2001. They may have needed to reduce the prize amount -- from $50,000 to $20,000. But they have continued to award a donation through this community award with no public incident, at least.
Other "cap circumventions"
The Orlando Magic have faced some other controversies over cap circumvention.
It is not for their boldly clearing cap room in the summer of 1999 and throughout 2000 to get Tracy McGrady and Grant Hill. But the Magic were one of the first teams to clear cap room for free agents so blatantly.
When they signed Horace Grant in the summer of 1994, it was not a secret around the league. And that had the Chicago Bulls upset.
The Bulls accused the Magic of tampering when Magic executives openly talked about signing Grant before the beginning of free agency on July 1 -- teams are fined heavily for this now. Grant made it clear himself that he was leaving Chicago before the season ended and that his preferred landing spot was Orlando.
That was not the end of the story, though. The Magic put a termination clause in the contract after one year, and the league believed that it violated the salary cap rules. A court determined it did, and the Magic had to get to work to sign Grant under the rules.
They did that by clearing cap room, trading a few players, including Scott Skiles, and getting only draft picks in return. That cleared the room to sign Grant. They had an out clause after two years and increased his salary after exercising that.
That is at least some evidence that teams do commonly push the limits of what is allowed in the league. In this instance, the contract was not allowed under the rules, and so the Magic were not actively circumventing the cap. The contract was not allowed before it was signed.
But, in the end, the Orlando Magic never did something so egregious as the LA Clippers are accused of doing with Kawhi Leonard. In the end, the Magic did something that was barely a circumvention of the cap or something they could correct.
But it shows how difficult it can be to dance around the various rules that makeup the NBA.