Trade & FA 2025-26: Free Agency Starts 5pm CST/6pm EST

[F Gump]

The numbers you're seeing are most likely calculated with non-repeater rates. Here's how I'm getting my numbers. I'm assuming a $166M cap based on the league's most recent projections. I won't claim a mistake is impossible, but I think this is in alignment with what Bobby Marks projected recently.

Dallas currently has 12 players under contract for 26-27 (including DLo's player option). Adding that to the $2.3M McGee/Prosper dead cap charges gives a total of $217.1M. They currently have the 8th best lottery odds. If that's where they pick, the 120% rookie scale value would be $7.4M. Let's add a single vet min at $2.5M and assume they run with 14 roster spots. The new total is $227M which would be $25.3M over the $201.7M tax limit.

The 25-26 tax brackets are in increments of $5.685M. The projected cap increase would set the 26-27 brackets in increments of $6.1M. The tax rates I'm using for each bracket are as follows (non-repeater/repeater).

1/3
1.25/3.25
3.5/5.5
4.75/6.75
5.25/7.25
and so on in .5 increments

$25.3M over the tax would result in a bill of $119.5M when paying the repeater rates. This would only be $68.8M if they were paying the non-repeater rates. Below is a graph I created before PJ's extension that shows roughly what each increase in salary would do to the tax payment and overall bill. If the Mavs were to win the lottery they go off the chart.



There are certainly things that can be done to mitigate this. I'm being a little more charitable already by limiting it to 14 roster spots. I don't actually expect them to go off the chart or anywhere close to that, but I do think the situation is a bit more dire than you're suggesting if they do nothing.

Thank you for taking the time to outline all of that. In general, I don't have any quibble with the payroll numbers (227M) or the roster assumption (filling 14 slots). I think those are the likely landing spots on the present trajectory.

I did not tell Google to use repeater rates, and that is the difference between your number and theirs.

But I do have a small quibble. Your numbers aren't actually 150M. 119M is still a big number, but 150 is over 25% bigger. 

One other thing to mention. It doesn't take massive cuts to payroll to lower that tax number. If DAR can be persuaded to leave (or traded at the TDL for an expiring), the tax is down to about 98M. Find a way to move Hardy and it's down to about 71M. Still big numbers, but not disastrous.