senrad wrote:
Im confused about the off season schedule. Is the re-signing period before we can make trades or after? What I'm wondering is if we can trade kirk before we have to make a decision on Ben. Could teams renounce their FA's and have cap room for us to move Kirk so we have $$ to sign Ben?
The short answer to your question is yes, but we'd have to trade him to a team that has cap room or non guaranteed salaries and not one that has to match salaries in order to make room for Gordon. There are only a handful of teams who can do that, and those teams will have a lot of talent to sift through as finances will rule much of the NBA off season.
As for the off season schedule it goes basically like this:
First, trading resumes: It starts as soon as your season is over (and the season of the team you are trading with), however, players who have options or are expiring can not be traded until the new year rolls around (so a team with a contract that expires at the end of this season can't trade him in the 2 months between when this season ends and before next season officially starts)
Next comes the draft
Next comes July 1st which is when teams can negotiate with free agents, but they can't officially sign them yet. This is the only period where sign and trades can be worked out for RFAs to avoid having to go through the "matching" process. A team and a FA can agree on an offersheet, but since it's not official a S&T can be worked instead (as with Joe Johnson), once an offersheet is officially signed a S&T can no longer be done.
Next comes 2 weeks into july (roughly, I'm not sure if it's the 3rd monday or 2 weeks exactly or what), which is the period where FAs can officially sign all the agreements they made during the first 2 weeks.
Next comes July 23rd, this is the deadline to withdraw a qualifying offer which is significant if you are negotiating with a premier free agent and have a QO extended. Prior to this point you could revoke the QO immediately and sign the the other guy, but after this point you can't revoke the QO and remove the RFAs cap hold. This will be important in 2010 if we have cap space and Tyrus is still here.