Thanks Kolay! You've got a lot of knowledge.
There are different reported contract amounts, however I chose to use the ones that made the most sense under the CBA and based on history. As far as I can tell, Joe has always built raises into his deals, and there is no reason to believe he would not do the same for Davis or Evans. Hence why I used StroyTeller's numbers with the increases.
The Ben degrading contract is interesting. I do not think anyone has ever taken a degrading contract before, and I am not sure that Ben would be happy to be the first.
Losing $7 million. That is a simple way to look at it. Shares to teams under the cap of the luxury tax are 1/30th (based on 30 teams). Then the remainder is either used by the league (for special funding purposes) or returned EQUALLY to the teams.
Very few teams are under the cap during the year, and traditionally, the league redistributes the money to the owners. So even if you are over the cap, you can still get luxury tax shares. And of course, the higher league salaries, the more likely that escrow will be triggered.
The Cap and Tax Threshold will fluctuate each year, but $3~5 million may be a bit much. Both #s are based on Basketball Related Income. If something should happen to reduce league revenue, then the cap and tax levels would sink. For the sake of simplicity, I used constant values BECAUSE, there is no reason to believe that BRI will jump up in a big way over the next 3 years.