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  1. I don’t know who reps Dennis but I doubt it will be for much longer. If you didn’t have papers for this guy to sign minute-one of free agency on team _____ for either the desired $$$ or the role expected what was the sense in turning down the offer from LA? The answer is none. Now he won’t have any BR next season meaning the most he can be offered by the Celtics will be a 20% raise. No need for any other team to go higher so it will take plus seasons of working his azz off in the NBA to rebuild his value to what it was when the extension was offered. There’s a saying about playing with fire that seems apropos here…

    Kind of feel for Dennis but this is a disaster wholly of his own creation. This one will sting for a few years but with luck he’ll find his way to that $$ bag in a season or two. Those Bird Rights have flown the coop and it takes time to re-acquire that status:

    As is the case with every exception in the CBA, there are different kinds of Bird Rights. Here is how each can be broken down:

    Full Bird Rights
    A team gets a player’s full Bird Rights if they spend three years with their team without leaving in free agency.
    It doesn’t have to be on a three-year deal. This applies to players on a three-year deal, players on a two-year deal followed by a one-year deal or players on three consecutive one-year deals.
    Early Bird Rights
    A team gets a player’s Early Bird Rights if he spends two years with a team without leaving in free agency.
    Non-Bird Rights
    A team gets a player’s non-Bird Rights if he spends a single year with the team.
    From exact financial terms, non-Bird Rights allow teams to pay players up to 120 percent of his previous salary in order to re-sign him. For example, if a player is coming off a one-year deal that paid him $10 million, the team he was on can go over the cap to re-sign him to a contract where the first year is worth up to $12 million.

    Furthermore, Early Bird Rights are similar, but they allow teams to pay players either 175 percent of his previous salary or 104.5 percent of the average league salary, whichever is higher. (The latter is in place to protect players coming off minimum deals.) Hence, in the former scenario, a player coming off a two-year deal where each year was worth $10 million can be re-signed to a contract where the first year is worth up to $17.5 million, i.e. 175 percent of the previous salary, if the team wants to go over the cap when re-signing said player.

    And finally, for Full Bird Rights, the only limit in place is the max salary the player can receive, be it 25 percent of the cap, 30 percent of the cap or 35 percent of the cap. For a recent example, just observe how star Denver Nuggets big man Nikola Jokic went from earning the minimum in 2017-18 ($1.5 million) to earning the max in 2018-19 ($25.5 million).

    As far as trades and the transferal of Bird Rights go, if a player has been with a team for three complete years and he gets traded, his new team will acquire his Bird Rights.

    However, if a player has been on a team for two years and re-signs for a third year, they automatically inherit a no-trade clause on that third season. Why? Because it gives players the right to have to approve a trade which would cause them to lose the full Bird Rights that were about to be available to them.

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