The truth about the salary cap
I don't understand Seattle releasing Wistrom at all. He's not very good. But, it costs them $2.2 million more in total cap money to cut him than to keep him. Sure, they can defer part of the dead money to 2008, but why cut a guy who is at least a "just a guy" when you are upside down on his cap number?
Forgive me if you were being sarcastic, but this is whack.
Salary cap dollars == real dollars.
Every single dollar that you pay to a player goes to your salary cap number. Every dollar of cap corresponds to a dollar that was actually given to a player.
A lot of attention is being paid to which dollar counts against which year's cap. This isn't really important. Teams can move dollars between years by restructuring contracts, using fake LTBE incentives, and numerous other options.
Bottom line:
The only thing that really matters is how much cash your team pays its players. The salary cap is just a (highly fungible) accounting mechanism which is used to keep track of this.
Had Seattle kept Wistrom, they would have had to pay him $3.5M in salary.
Now they don't.
Paying $3.5M less in salary means $3.5M less in cap.
Before 2007, Seattle paid Wistrom $7M in bonus money which has not yet been counted against the cap. Now those dollars are going to count against the cap.
Apparently they will elect to have 1/3 of that appear in the 2007, and 2/3 in 2008 (they could have taken 100% in 2007).
It doesn't matter. If they need more cap in 2007 and less in 2008, they can restructure. If they need more cap in 2008 and less in 2007, they can use late season LTBEs.
If they hadn't cut Wistrom, the $7M in bonus money would have counted against the cap with 1/3 in 2007, 1/3 in 2008 and 1/3 in 2009.
Its true that excessive use of deals with big signing bonuses and restructuring (which usually means giving the player a new signing bonus in lieu of current and future salary) can eventually hurt a team. This is because:
1. They will have to give players front loaded contracts, which prevents them from cutting unproductive players and:
2. The cash against cap provision of the CBA will create a salary cap penalty in years when both your team and the league as a whole exceed the cash cap. (In 2006, the league as a whole fell short of the cash cap, resulting in the recent upwards adjustment of the salary cap for all teams in 2007-2011).
However, neither of these points become a serious problem until teams have already pulled tens of millions of dollars from their future salary caps.
