The Amnesty Clause: It’s one of those rules that has only taken place a couple of times in NBA history but it causes major change when it is implemented.
For the uninitiated, the amnesty rule has been used twice ever by the NBA, the most recent coming prior to the 2011 season. This would allow the team to waive a player and remove their salary from their salary cap. The team would still be required to pay the player their remaining salary but they would not have to deal with the ramifications of still owing them money when building their team.
For the purposes of this exercise, we are going to say that every team has to pick someone. This is somewhat unrealistic as only 21 teams used it the last time it was around and they were allowed to use it over four seasons. But where is the fun in playing it fair?
Furthermore, we will only be looking at players who will be under contract with their current team at the beginning of the 2020-2021 season (if it even starts in 2020). While players are still technically under contract for this year, the team is not allowed to use the amnesty clause until the free agency moratorium period, removing the pending free agents from the cap sheets.
Finally, expect some of these to make you mad. This is trying to be the most sensible and cold-hearted financial choice about the situation. This is not to say teams will always get it right. For some reason, the New York Knicks used this on Chauncey Billups to try star chasing rather than save it for the ailing knees of Amar’e Stoudemire. We hope to do better than that here.
Without further ado, the Atlanta Hawks are up first.