Milwaukee Bucks: The Mirza Teletovic salary cap conundrum
By Max Carlin
As Mirza Teletovic’s career comes to an untimely end, the Milwaukee Bucks should see some much-needed salary cap relief.
If the Milwaukee Bucks were going to make one final push, they were running out of time. It was Nov. 7, 2017, and the 4-5 Bucks trailed the 5-5 Cleveland Cavaliers by 10 with a little over half the fourth quarter remaining.
Giannis Antetokounmpo posted up on Dwyane Wade — still a Cav in those long-forgotten days — and turned baseline as the double came to swallow him up. Antetokounmpo fumbled the ball, gathered, and found Mirza Teletovic sprinting behind him. Teletovic stopped on a dime, showcasing versatile shooting ability so rare for a man his size, and drained the corner 3.
Teletovic picked up his 14th, 15th and 16th points of the night on that shot, the fifth-most he ever accumulated in a Bucks uniform in a single game. Ask Milwaukee, and they’re unfortunately the last he’ll ever score in an NBA uniform — Bucks or otherwise.
At first, Teletovic’s absence seemed rather innocuous. On Nov. 10, he missed his first game of the season for what was termed “knee soreness.” A week and a half later, Teletovic was ruled out for four weeks after undergoing arthroscopic surgery to alleviate that soreness. A month later, the situation became slightly more serious.
On Dec. 15, the Bucks announced that Teletovic had been diagnosed with pulmonary emboli, blood clots in his lungs. For Teletovic, this was his second bout with the condition after fending it off in 2015 with the Brooklyn Nets. This time, he was ruled out indefinitely.
Teletovic’s fate with the Bucks became definite on March 10, when they requested waivers on the 32-year-old sharpshooter.
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Typically, players with contracts as sizable as Teletovic’s do not get waived. He has $10.5 million remaining on his deal in 2018-19. However, the Bucks elected to use the stretch provision when waiving Teletovic, allowing the team to spread the remaining cap hit evenly across the next three seasons.
Now, it might seem unwise to punt on $3.5 million in cap space for each of the next three seasons, especially for a Bucks team that’s still paying both Larry Sanders and Spencer Hawes after stretching their salaries in previous years. The thing is, the Bucks don’t believe they’re punting that cap space.
You’ll probably recall the unfortunate saga that spelled the end of Chris Bosh’s illustrious career. Bosh, much like Teletovic, developed blood clots. Unable to simultaneously manage the condition and play professional basketball, Bosh was forced out of the league.
The Miami Heat waived Bosh, the NBA and the players’ union determined Bosh’s condition was likely career-ending, and the Heat had Bosh’s massive salary excluded from the team’s cap sheet (Bosh still got his money, but for cap purposes, his contract vanished).
In 2017’s update to the NBA’s Collective Bargaining Agreement, the league and the players’ association developed further institutions to accommodate a situation like Bosh’s. The two sides agreed upon a Fitness to Play Panel, which would determine if a player’s injury was career-ending by evaluating whether a player’s continued playing would unduly endanger his body or life. If the Panel determines a player is not fit to play, his team can apply for his salary to be excluded from the team’s cap sheet.
The catch with salary exclusion is that if the player is ever cleared to play, and resumes playing, his salary is returned to his former team’s books. Furthermore, that team can never re-acquire the player.
Waiving and stretching Teletovic indicates that the Bucks intend to subject Teletovic to the Fitness to Play Panel, and that they believe his career to be over. Therefore, the Bucks expect to have Teletovic’s salary removed from the team’s cap sheet.
It seems eons ago that Teletovic had a hand in final pushes against the powers of the Eastern Conference, longer ago that he was a major free agent addition for the Bucks. Going forward, the unfortunate truth of the matter is the only value that Teletovic will offer the Bucks is addition by subtraction.
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As Teletovic’s career comes to an untimely end, the Bucks will gain a small amount of salary relief, and given the team’s upcoming financial decisions, every dollar will help.