MAVS NEWS:

[F Gump]

Like FGump said, you have access to the room MLE, plus all the additional capspace before you become an over the cap team.

I see the confusion my bad. Teams operating under the cap only have access to the Room MLE, but there really isn't a scenario where a team should use that because the NTMLE is always better. So teams should typically operate as an over the cap team for FA, but the question was for trades originally.

In trades however, under the cap teams have the least restrictions. But they are menial.

"Teams operating under the cap only have access to the Room MLE, but there really isn't a scenario where a team should use that because the NTMLE is always better. So teams should typically operate as an over the cap team for FA"

Not sure what you are thinking of here. But if a team is way under the cap, they spend their cap room first (and perhaps use some of it to retain Bird rights to re-sign a player) until they are out of cap room, and they have a big advantage since they can pay more than other teams. Then AFTERWARDS once their cap room is spent, they spend the Room MLE and minimum salary exceptions to go beyond.

They don't always go over, and they don't have to use Room MLE.

Because the salary floor is very punitive to be below when the season starts, they will spend at least 90% of the cap for sure.

If a team is barely under the cap, then the norm is that they will operate as an over-cap team if the Big MLE is greater than the amount they are under the cap. It's a question of what offers them the biggest possible ability to spend on a desired player.

If we are talking about DAL, they are close enough to the cap where there's no benefit to being an under-the-cap team. They will have way more flexibility using "exceptions" (all of which are "permissions" in various ways to exceed the spending limits, aka "cap", to add a player to the roster). FWIW you don't have to make a declaration - you just pick how you will operate, and work accordingly under the rules.