Signing a free agent...

[Marek]

Hello,

I began to play the Dynasty mode with the Cleveland Cavaliers. I wanted to sign a few free agents, but I have the Salary Cap space set to -20. The PDA tells me I have no free space to sign. So the question - What I need to do ,to get a free Salary Cap space...?

Thanks in advance.
Very best regards
Marek

[asgsjb]

The cap thing is interesting. You can sign free agents if you are under the cap and the salary of the free agent does not bring you back over the cap. So, for example, if you are $1M under the cap, you can only sign free agents who make $1M or less. You can also sign free agents when you are over the cap, but they have to be making league minimum...which means you are signing the cheapest players in free agency.

If you want to sign a more expensive free agent, you have to clear cap space. If you release someone, their salary will count against your cap, so that won't help unless it is a player in the last year of the contract where that salary will come off your books at the end of the season. For longer term contracts, you can trade them for expiring contracts where those salaries will also come off the books at season end. But note that both of these result in the salary cap help coming at season end. If you want immediate cap space to sign a free agent now, you need to trade players for cheaper players. But note that the program only allows you to trade salaries that are within 20% (+/- $200k) of each other, so that if you are trying to lose an expensive contract, you will have to do a lot of deals to turn that large contract into a smaller one (freeing up cap space). It can be done, though, especially if you don't care about losing an expensive player and you just keep making deals to get cheaper players regardless of who they are or what position they play...as long as you end up with an expiring contract that comes off your roster and books at the end of the season. So, for example, if Mourning is sitting on your bench and you think he's going to retire anyway and you don't care about him and you want to lose his salary, find a team who wants a center and has any player who is within 20% (+/- $200K) of Mourning and make the deal (regardless of overall rating drops, etc.)...then find a team who wants that player and make another deal, and so on and so on, until you have a cheap player with an expiring contract who you can leave on your bench or drop without wiorrying about carrying his salary beyond this year. Then go free agent shopping with your cap savings.

I hope this helps.