You add up the salary commitments. Then for each free agent, you have a cap hold/charge that adds to the number as well. (If you renounce the free agents, you lose the opportunity to go over the cap to sign them, but then their hold is erased.) You also have a cap hold for #1 picks and for empty roster slots below 13.
If all of that added together is below the cap, then you have cap room, But unless it's a bigger difference than the MLE you get when you are over the cap, you've gained nothing in spending room.
So the first thing in calculating cap room is to figure out your hard cap commitments, and the fact that the Mavs are already at or over the cap with only the first 5 players - which doesn't include Kidd or whatever they might get for him in a trade and also doesn't include Wright, Barea, Williams, George, or any cap holds - and the fact that they are unlikely to simply give away any of those 5 in a salary dump at the deadline means that they aren't even close enough to make this a feasible discussion item. The reality is, they'll probably be close to $70M without even adding Kidd-or-replacement.
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