|
The compliance buyouts are there to represent the practice in recent CBA's of the teams getting cap relief following a new agreement with the Players' Association by being allowed to buy out some existing contracts with no cap impact. The last time it was done, in 2014, 11 players were bought out, and the year before there were 17. There were good players dumped both times - the point is to get rid of large contracts that are or will soon become a problem, so whether or not the player is productive is a secondary consideration to their age and contract status.
They shouldn't be confused with regular buyouts - the Compliance Buyouts are only allowed once every few years. They're essentially a safety valve to get the AI out of serious cap trouble periodically, the same way the real GM's give themselves the ability to undo their worst contract errors. If there's a full renegotiation of the CBA when it's up in 2022, I expect we'll see them again.
|