After an immensely disappointing collapse in the second round of the playoffs, the Los Angeles Clippers find themselves in an even more uncomfortable position this offseason. The NBA’s soft cap helps teams retain their own players, particularly franchises with owners willing to spend into the luxury tax to keep their teams together. However, the reverberations from the trio of the Miami Heat led to a current Collective Bargaining Agreement that makes it harder to add new pieces to an expensive core.

In the current CBA, teams over the “apron” (always $4 million over the luxury tax line, wherever that falls) do not have access to some of the exceptions that enable teams to bring in new players. The players and owners accomplished this split in an intuitive way: since teams over the apron cannot use the larger Mid-Level Exception, Bi-Annual Exception or acquire players via sign-and-trade (Larry Coon has the full list of limitations over at his CBAFAQ), using any of these triggers a “hard cap” at the apron which cannot be exceeded for any reason.

That means many teams face a choice or limitation since they cannot get the best of both worlds. In some cases, this takes the form of a limitation- the team knows they cannot get under the apron so they just stay over and just work with a more limited toolbox. In other cases, a team can choose to take advantage of the below-apron goodies with the knowledge that doing so puts a ceiling on their spending. If you want to know more about how being hard capped affects a team’s planning, take a look at a piece I wrote about the Warriors at the beginning of the season

Last summer, Doc Rivers had the problem of a top-heavy roster without a ton of salary flexibility. Spending about $55 million on Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, DeAndre Jordan and JJ Redick meant cap space was not an option and other outstanding contracts like Jamal Crawford’s were not at the level to really get back a strong return on a trade. (whiffing on draft picks certainly did not help).

As such, GM Doc made the justifiable decision that the way to go was to use the under the apron perks and take the restriction of a hard-capped ceiling. Going this route allowed him to spend more on free agents with a larger Mid-Level Exception and use the smaller but still useful Bi-Annual Exception to secure his backup point guard: Jordan Farmar. Rivers made the right call since he did not possess the pieces necessary to make life over the apron work and had enough give to go in either direction. Unfortunately, Hawes and Farmar ended up producing very little for this team in the regular season or playoffs and Farmar is already off the team with a little over $500,000 in dead money in each of the next three seasons.

This time around, the Clippers are cornered in a different way. With many of the same obligations, this time Lob City faces a new challenge since DeAndre Jordan hits unrestricted free agency for the first time. While the Clippers can spend whatever they need to keep Jordan around, if he chooses to play somewhere else they have very little recourse. Rivers can threaten to not facilitate any move via sign-and-trade like the Nuggets did with Andre Iguodala in 2013 before relenting which effectively takes a batch of teams off the board for Jordan unless he is willing to take a pay cut. However, they do run some risk of frustrating their center in a summer where plenty of desirable markets and teams have the cap space to sign him outright. I would advocate for a more honest approach where the team says they want him back and will pay him what they can but that they would consider making a sign-and-trade happen if it made them better. 

Rivers may need to take this approach for one simple reason: if DeAndre Jordan leaves without the Clippers even netting a trade exception in return, it will be incredibly hard for them to recover in 2015-16. The combination of Paul, Blake, Redick and almost $1.5 million in dead money makes having usable cap space incredibly unlikely unless they are willing to make bigger moves. Without that, Rivers has to make the same basic choice as last summer again without enough combinable contracts to bring in someone a little too expensive for their current team. That likely means Rivers would potentially elect to use the larger MLE and sign-and-trades but does not have the use of the Bi-Annual Exception either way because they used it on Farmar last year. These limitations illustrate the necessity of getting at least a trade exception back because even the larger MLE will not be enough to get an even passable Jordan replacement. While a $15 million or so trade exception cannot fix all of their woes, it would make adding depth, albeit heavily imperfect depth, substantially more realistic.

If Jordan elects to stay with the Clippers, their summer gets pretty simple unless really huge moves are on the table. At his likely new salary, it would be incredibly difficult for the team to play under the apron again, so bringing everyone back and adding a smaller piece with the Taxpayer MLE along with some small moves on the fringes (not including sign-and-trades) appears to be the only real outcome. Considering their success this season, the Clippers should be happy with that.

The dramatic difference between these two scenarios makes DeAndre Jordan the most interesting player of the 2015 offseason because leaving changes two franchises and likely takes one team out of title contention for 2016.