Owners Want To Implement the ‘Carmelo Rule’
If the NBA owners have it their way we won’t have a repeat of last season’s MeloDrama ever again.
The owners want to add what is known as the ‘Carmelo Rule’ to the next CBA agreement.
What the ‘Carmelo Rule’ would do is prevent teams from using a Bird exception to sign or extend a player acquired by trade unless they are acquired before July 1 of the final season of the player’s contract. That was how the New York Knicks were able to acquire Carmelo Anthony.
Other clauses that are proposed by the owners are:
- Shortening guaranteed contracts to a maximum of three or four seasons
- Limiting Larry Bird rights — which enable teams to exceed the salary cap to re-sign their own free agents — to one player per team per season
- Reducing the annual mid-level exception, which was valued at $5.8 million last season, to roughly $3 million annually and limiting mid-level contracts to a maximum of two or three seasons in length as opposed to the current maximum of five seasons
- Significant reductions in maximum salaries and annual raises and a 5 percent rollbacks on current contracts
- Allow each team to release one player via the so-called “amnesty” clause and gain both salary-cap and luxury-tax relief when that player’s cap number is removed from the books