Was Austin Rivers limited to a salary of $3,110,796 with the Clippers next season – the amount his rookie-scale contract called for before the Pelicans declined his option?
I argued no, because New Orleans – not Los Angeles, his Prior Team as defined by the Collective Bargaining Agreement – declined the option.
Apparently, someone interpreted the CBA differently. Or this is just a coincidence.
Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports:Free-agent guard Austin Rivers has reached agreement on a two-year, $6.4 million contract to re-sign with the Los Angeles Clippers, league sources told Yahoo Sports.
The second year of the contract is a player option, sources said.
If Rivers’ starting salary were capped at the amount of his fourth-year option, the most the Clippers could have paid over two years was$6,454,902.
Maybe the NBA ruled that limit applied. Maybe that’s just what Rivers was worth, anyway.
But, for their sake, I hope Rivers and his agent did what they could to challenge that commonly reported CBA interpretation.
