The Houston Rockets recently agreed to a two-year, $20 million deal with Nene to bring the center back, and the move raised eyebrows around the league.
It was fairly clear that the Rockets were trying to manipulate their cap situation to allow for a trade later in the year to land someone making up to $10 million, with the prevailing thought being that Andre Iguodala is their top target. Memphis refuses to discuss a buyout with the former Finals MVP and prefers to wait to trade him, but a deal with Houston now seems unlikely after the news that broke on Thursday.
The NBA and NBPA have been meeting to discuss Nene’s contract and the salary structure, which has a $2.6 million base and $7.4 million in “likely” bonuses. You can read all the details on how this was structured and why in this piece on Early Bird Rights by friend of the program Jeff Siegel, but the gist of it is, the bonus portion (tied to team wins) would only count if he’s traded to a team that won 52 games last year for ingoing salary, while the full $10 million would count for the Rockets outgoing salary. It was clever, except the NBA wasn’t willing to let it slide, as reported by The Athletic’s Shams Charania.
Rockets are no longer able to use Nene’s full $10M salary as trade chip, per league and union agreement. Houston signed Nene, discussed similar proposal for Iman Shumpert, potentially to move for someone like Andre Iguodala. Nene still has opportunity to earn $7.4M in bonuses. https://t.co/8lOxEj67w6
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) September 19, 2019
As such, the Rockets now have Nene on a deal that can only be worth $2.6 million in a trade, which means he can’t be used to match money for someone like Iguodala. This is a significant blow to their ability to make moves around the trade deadline, and one would expect they’ll do whatever is needed to keep Nene from hitting his bonuses so as to not have the double whammy of possibly being stuck with him and having to pay the extra $7.4 million hit on their luxury tax bill.
