[Windmill360]

There has been a puzzling tendency around the NBA over the last 24 months to exaggerate the Mavericks’ cap space. It infected the discussion of Dallas’ grand plans to sign both Howard and point guard Deron Williams, even though the math most generous to the Mavs showed that they couldn’t have carved out nearly enough cap space this summer to actually pay max deals to both players.

As things stand now — and things are always subject to change — the Mavs should be able to barely squeeze in a max deal to Howard, who will be eligible for a starting salary on his next contract of $20.5 million. But the math is tight, and the idea that the Mavs could chase a second potential star in free agency is currently fanciful.

To wit: The Mavs, as of this moment, have $34.2 million in guaranteed money for the 2013-14 season committed to four players: Nowitzki, Shawn Marion, Vince Carter and first-round pick Jared Cunningham. There has been mass confusion about the status of Carter’s deal, but according to Deeks and other sources, $2 million of the veteran shooting guard’s $3.18 million deal for 2013-14 became guaranteed when the Mavs did not waive him on June 30; that amount has been factored into the $34.2 million figure above, as has the customary 120 percent rookie scale figure for Cunningham.

But the rules — those rules again! — say the Mavs must account for eight empty roster spots, up to 12, by adding eight rookie minimum salary charges at $490,180 a pop. Toss those in, and you’re up to $38.1 million. Even assuming a very nice 5 percent bump up in the cap level from $58 million to $60 million, the Mavs would have about $21.9 million in cap space — just enough to fit Howard’s $20.5 million max salary, but not enough to upgrade the roster in any other meaningful way.

The Mavs could trim about $1 million off that figure by using the stretch provision on Carter’s deal, but this $38.1 million amount doesn’t account for a number of other potential charges: cap holds linked to a pile of outgoing free agents, including point guard Darren Collison, a useful young player, and just about everyone Dallas acquired this summer; a cap hold linked to guard Roddy Beaubois, once thought to be a core piece of the Mavs’ future but now sort of on the outs there; shooting guard O.J. Mayo’s player option, which he may well decline; a team option on shooting guard Dominique Jones; any money for second-round picks Jae Crowder and Bernard James; and the possibility that Dallas might keep and use its own first-round pick in next year’s draft.

Again: All of this is workable for one of the league’s brainiest front office regimes. The Mavs can renounce all their free agents, sign Crowder and James to non-guaranteed deals for 2013-14 (and simply cut them), trade Marion’s expiring deal ($9.066 million with and early-termination option at Marion’s choice) between now and next season’s trade deadline (a real potential game-changer) and pull lots of other simple moves to open up Howard-size cap space. Dallas will have the sign-and-trade route, a path Brooklyn and the Lakers will not be able to use next summer, since those two teams will be at or above the payroll level where the new collective bargaining agreement prohibits teams from entering into sign-and-trades.

So it’s fine for Howard to use the Mavs as a threat, and for all of us to place Dallas as the three-time Defensive Player of the Year’s theoretical free agency front-runner. But let’s not go overboard in detailing Dallas’ potential cap space, or forget that the Mavs will have to somehow field a full roster around the Nowitzki/Howard pairing if they do pull it off. Howard is worth these machinations, but they are tricky.

http://nba-point-forward.si.com/2012...sct=nba_t11_a0