If the Clippers send Austin, Jamal, Wesley, and
Alan Anderson to the Knicks, they can create an even bigger TPE and force Melo to decline his bonus. From New York’s perspective, this is simply one trade—Anthony goes out (24.5M) and Rivers, Crawford, Johnson, and Anderson come back (30.8M), which is a legal trade. From the Clippers’ perspective, it works as two trades:
Rivers (11M) goes to the Knicks for nothing, creating an 11M TPE, and
Crawford, Johnson, and Anderson (19.8M) go to the Knicks for Anthony (24.5M), which is a legal trade
Since the Clippers would be sending out $19,861,443 in salary in the Anthony trade, the max that they’d be able to bring back would be $24,926,804—that gives Carmelo only about $500,000 of his trade bonus, forcing him to waive the rest for the trade to go through. It actually increases the Clippers’ wiggle room under the hard cap, since they’re sending out more salary than they’re taking back, and it takes LAC out of taxpayer territory by a few million. Then, next season when they likely won’t be restricted by the hard cap, they’ll have that $11 million Rivers TPE to work with—we’ve seen how valuable those big exceptions have been for Cleveland in adding role players for nothing.
