When you do a restructure you are borrowing cap space from the future...if you turn an 11m base salary into a 10m signing bonus and a 1m base salary the cash is the same.... it just means you can spread the 10m over 5 years.... instead of a 11m cap hit you now have a 3m cap hit( 1m base + 2m prorated signing bonus)
Year1 you pay back 2m right off the top so you have created 8m in cap space
Years2-5 you pay back 2m a year as well.... but there is no interest on this loan..... you borrowed 10m and paid back 10m over 5 years
But in fact it is even better because the cap keeps going up....it is a cash back loan..... you borrow 10m but only pay back 8m or 9m if you stretch it over the full 5 years
When the cap is 150m then 10m represents 10/150 or 6.7%
By Year5 the cap has gone up 50m so now it is 10/200 or 5%
The cap has gone up by 33% so cap charges in the future are worth less than they are today ... the same 10m hurts a lot less... it is free money
You borrowed 10m and had to pay back 8m essentially.... if this happened in real life people would be lining up around the block to get this deal and they would do it as many times as they could... it is the same with restructures
Every guaranteed base salary should always be restructured and most other large contracts should be done as well as long as that player is going to be on your roster that year since it pre-pays their salary for the year
There is no fear, no risk, no doing it too much..... it has no bearing on whether you can cut a player in the future.... Dead Money is Dead and can never be resurrected by continuing to pay a bad player
Dead Money is simply the receipt for cap savings already taken in the past when the cap was much lower..... it really shouldn't even by tied to any one player in particular since the savings went to the general fund.... and with rollover you can push forward any unspent cap space to the future anyways... another bonus
