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Jimmy Butler Could Make A Lot More Money By Waiting a Year for NBA’s “Super-cap”

By Matthew Price

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Jimmy Butler bet on himself this season by declining a 4-year, $44 million extension. A great move. The question now is, should Butler bet on himself again for a chance to leverage the “super-cap” that starts next summer?

Jimmy Butler has had quite the season for the Chicago Bulls. It started off with him taking a gamble: he declined a four-year, $44 million extension from Chicago and decided to bet on himself in hopes of a better contract at the end of this year. Many Bulls fans expected him to have a strong season, but very few of us predicted he would achieve his current level of excellence.

Thus far, Butler is averaging 20.2 points, 3.3 assists, 5.9 rebounds and 1.7 steals per game while shooting 46 percent from the field and 35 percent from beyond the arc. He is also one of the best perimeter defenders in the NBA, and Butler is the favorite to win the Most Improved Player award. All of this should lead to Butler, who is a restricted free-agent this summer (meaning the Bulls can keep him by matching any offer sheet another team makes), to sign a max contract with the Bulls… right?

Not necessarily.

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This summer will be the last one before the NBA’s salary cap has an enormous rise because of the NBA’s new T.V. deals with TNT and ESPN. A huge rise in the salary cap means that NBA teams will have much more space to sign and pay players. In the past 10 years, the NBA’s salary cap has gone up from $49.5 million to $63.2 million. Next season’s projected salary cap is supposed to be around $66.5 million, which would be the final year before the NBA’s new T.V. deals kick-off. The cap for the 2016-17 season could hit the $90 million range, which would be a dramatic increase.

So how does this relate to players around the NBA, specifically Jimmy G. Buckets? Well, players who sign max contracts and have played less than seven years in the league (Butler fits into this category) can earn 25% of the salary cap in their maximum contract. This means that if Butler decided to decline his qualifying offer (which is approximately $3 million), he would make about $16.63 million his first season, followed by a 7.5% increase of his first year contract value after each year. Here’s what that would look like, assuming Butler signs a 5-year deal:

Age, Year of Contract                    Money (Estimated)

26, Year 1 (2015-16)                             $16.63 million

27, Year 2 (2016-17)                             $17.87 million

28, Year 3 (2017-18)                             $19.12 million

29, Year 4 (2018-19)                             $20.37 million

30, Year 5 (2019-20)                             $21.62 million

Total                                                        $95.60 million

As you can see, Butler would make approximately $96 million over the span of his contract. Many players would take the deal rather than betting on themselves because they risk the chance of possible injury or something catastrophic in their next season. However, the salary cap has never had such a large jump in-between seasons, and Butler has already shown that he is willing to bet on himself.

The alternative to not signing a max contract this summer would be to take his qualifying offer of $3 million for the 2015-16 season, and then when his contract expires that summer, sign the max with the new salary cap in place. Although he would be losing out on $13 million the first year and the guarantee of so much money should anything happen to him in 2015-16, he would make a lot more money over time. Here’s a table of how much money Butler could make if he waited one more season and then signed a max contract in the summer of 2015-16:

Age, Year of Contract                  Money (Estimated)

26, Final year – Current contract    $3.01 million

27, Year 1 (2016-17)                         $22.5 million

28, Year 2 (2017-18)                         $24.19 million

29, Year 3 (2018-19)                         $25.88 million

30, Year 4 (2019-20)                         $27.56 million

31, Year 5 (2020-21)                         $29.25 million

Total                                                    $132.39 million

By comparing the two tables, we learn that Butler could make more money by waiting it out. He would make about $37 million more, subtracted by however much money he would make in the first year of his next contract if he signs the max this summer. Theoretically, Butler could only be losing out on $7 million, but he would have to sign another maximum contract for that to happen. The odds of Butler, who would be 31 years old once his contract expires, signing another max contract are slim.

It seems at first glance that the wiser move would be for Butler to just wait a year and finish with more money, but there is no guarantee that he doesn’t get injured or sustains his fantastic level of play next year.

With all of this in mind, the decision will be a tough one for Butler this summer. Should he sign for the max this summer and be satisfied knowing that he got $96 million, or should he take another big chance for the opportunity to take advantage of the NBA’s “super-cap” that starts during the summer of 2016?

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