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Can you restructure a contract to circumvent the DP rule, i.e. backload the deal such that you could buy down to make a player not a DP for a year?
Lots have been trying to speculate on Josef (Martinez). Assuming this is not allowed would be nice to put it to bed! -@strweavr
The designated player charge is actually pretty simple math. The league takes the payments over the course of the entire guaranteed portion of the contract—salary plus transfer fee—and averages them to determine the budget charge. So backloading a guaranteed contract to push more money to the later years would not have an impact on the players’ budget charge at front end of his contract. If, for example, a player made $700,000 in 2019 and then $4 million in 2020, $4.5 million in 2021 and $5 million in 2022, that player’s budget charge would be $3.55 million per year, the average of those four salaries and still well over DP level.
Does a transfer fee have to be spread out over the entire contract or can it be all put in year 1? -@collinsolberg
A team can pay the full transfer fee up front in that first year, but for same reason as above, that has no effect on a player’s budget number. So even if Atlanta paid all $15 million of Barco’s fee up front, that $15 million still is divided up over the length of the guaranteed portion of his contract, not just in the first year of the deal.