Bulls' Trade Of Kirk Hinrich Saves Them About $3.5 Million
(CBS) The Bulls made little noise as Thursday's trade deadline passed, with only the minor move of veteran guard Kirk Hinrich to the Hawks in return for guard Justin Holiday and a 2018 second-round pick.
What the Bulls also did in that deal was save about $3.5 million for owner Jerry Reinsdorf, according to salary cap guru Albert Nahmad.
Hinrich's salary figure this season is about $2.85 million. An undrafted player who's spent a lot of time in the D-League, Holiday's working on minimum-salary deal of about $947,000. So for the rest of the season, that saves the Bulls a little more than $600,000. (You must factor in that Chicago and Atlanta have already paid out about two-thirds of these players' salaries, so this references what's left on their contracts in hard dollars this season.)
The bigger savings come in luxury tax relief. Before this trade, the Bulls were about $4.5 million over that $84.74 million threshold, which is calculated by adding up the total annual salary of players on your roster at season's end. By going from a $2.85 million contract to a $947,000 contract, the Bulls shaved about $1.9 million off their base number in luxury tax calculations -- and that saves around $2.9 million in real money on the luxury tax payment, because the Bulls are on the hook to pay $1.50 for every $1 over the luxury tax line right now.
The Bulls also received a trade exception of about $2.9 million in the deal. That will expire one year from it being acquired.