The end of the Indiana Pacers salary cap sheet

While most Indiana Pacers players have pretty fair and team-friendly salaries, there is some rough stuff on the end of the cap sheet.

The 14 players on the Indiana Pacers with a guaranteed salary for the coming season all have a pretty fair contract, which benefits the team. Heck, even the 15th guy on the roster (more on him in a few sentences) has a very team-friendly deal.

But on the Pacers salary cap sheet, near the bottom, there is some yucky stuff. Two yucky things, to be exact. One of them is the $4 million owed to Al Jefferson after waiving him earlier in the summer. The other in the money still owed to Monta Ellis after he was waived and stretched last summer.

Beyond them, there is one player with a non-guaranteed contract in Ben Moore, who officially made the 15-man roster by not being waived earlier this week. Between the 14 guaranteed contracts, the two gross bits of dead money, and Moore’s deal, that is the totality of the Pacers cap sheet at the present moment.

Let’s examine everything that isn’t a guaranteed contract:

Ben Moore’s contract

Ben Moore occupies the Pacers 15th and final roster spot at the present moment. Between splitting time in Indiana and Fort Wayne last season as well as Moore outplaying Omari Johnson and Elijah Stewart in the preseason, Moore clawed and fought like hell for this roster spot. He’s earned at least a chance to show he is an NBA player.

The Pacers are paying Moore as a player who has to prove it this season. His contract is a minimum deal, meaning at the most he would make $1,312,611. However, this deal is only partially guaranteed, and the partial guarantee is very small (for NBA standards) at just $45,000. That means if he isn’t performing, or the team wants to go a different direction with the final roster spot, they could waive him with a minimal penalty at any time.

In early January 2019, every contract becomes fully guaranteed. Unless Moore impresses by that point, I would muse he is waived a la Damien Wilkins last season. It would open a roster spot for the team and allow them to sign someone who becomes available on the buyout market.

It’s an uphill climb for Moore still, but his whole career has been so far. He is on a very team-friendly deal, but perhaps he impresses and makes the final roster. We will have to see how he plays.

The Dead Money

The Pacers have over $6 million of cap space that is occupied by dead money, aka money that is stuck on the books no matter what.

That half dozen million dollars is split over two players. One of them is Al Jefferson, who the Pacers waived earlier in the summer. His original three-year, $30 million contract only had $4 million guaranteed in the final season, so the Pacers waived him to save $6 million. That was half of the money they used to sign Tyreke Evans, essentially. The decision to waive Al was a no-brainer, but it is a bummer that some money has to stay on the books for one more season.

The other dead money comes from Monta Ellis…

The Pacers are going to be paying Ellis $2,245,400 every season until 2022. This is because last summer they waived and stretched him when they released him from the roster. They had two options: the team could not stretch him and keep his $11 million plus on the books for just one season, or stretch that number over five seasons. They chose the latter.

It seems like a bonehead move now, but it really wasn’t. Stretching Ellis gave them almost $8 million in cap space, which allowed them to make all the signings they did last summer (Darren Collison, Bojan Bogdanovic, etc.). Without stretching Ellis, they could not have signed all of the guys that they did get. It was the right move.

Thankfully, the Moore money and Jefferson money will likely be off the books next season, which will give the Pacers about $5 mil extra in cap space to add someone else. But the Monta money will be around for a while. Now you understand all of the intricacies of the Indiana Pacers salary cap ledger. Unfortuantely, it will all dramatically change next year.