Blazers craft money strategy

Team’s focus next season will be on avoiding luxury tax

By kerry eggers

The Portland Tribune, Nov 19, 2009

PRITCHARD

For a team that just committed something in the neighborhood of $143 million in salary to two players, the Trail Blazers are well-positioned for the future in terms of payroll.

That doesn’t mean Portland will have salary-cap room to land a big-ticket free agent next summer. Still, the franchise that once paid $100 million in luxury taxes has its financial act together now.

This season, the Blazers’ payroll is $56.2 million for their 15 players – an average of $3.75 million per player, under the salary cap ($57.7 million) and well under the luxury-tax threshold ($69.92 million).

Portland is 27th among the 30 NBA teams in payroll, ahead of only Memphis, Minnesota, Detroit and Oklahoma City. Not bad for a team coming off a 54-win season and a Northwest Division co-championship.

Of the bottom 16 payroll teams this season, only three – Atlanta, Detroit and Portland – made the playoffs last season.

The cost of success is unavoidable, though. Before this season, General Manager Kevin Pritchard and his assistant, Tom Penn, signed Brandon Roy and LaMarcus Aldridge to five-year extensions that will cost billionaire owner Paul Allen a sizable chunk of change.

Roy signed a maximum-contract deal, so its terms won’t be set until next July, when the salary cap for the 2010-11 season is established. Under a complicated formula, the two-time All-Star guard will play next season under a contract that reaps 25 percent of 48 percent of the Blazers’ basketball-related income. He’ll get a 10.5-percent, non-compounded increase in each of the following four seasons.

For conversation purposes, let’s say Roy is likely to start at about $13 million in 2010-11 and jump to nearly $18.5 million by the end of the deal – a largesse of $78 million to $79 million.

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