NBA

Keith Bogans is about to make bank

Hedo Turkoglu, Keith Bogans
Former Nets guard Keith Bogans. (AP)

Former Nets guard Keith Bogans. (AP)
The one financial unknown in this blockbuster trade with the Boston Celtics is Keith Bogans’s: while all other contracts are set, the Nets have to sign-and-trade Bogans to make this deal work. So how much will he earn? It’s more than you think.

the Brooklyn Nets are acquiring three contracts: Paul Pierce (worth $15,333,334), Kevin Garnett ($12,433,735) and Jason Terry ($5,225,000). That’s a total of $32.99 million in salary.

When teams are in the luxury tax — as the Nets are — the amount of money they can acquire in a trade is equal to 125% of their outgoing salary, plus $100,000. So to make the trade work, the Nets have to send out about $26.3 million in salary — $26,313,656, to be exact.

Currently, the Nets are trading Kris Humphries ($12 million), Gerald Wallace ($10,105,855), MarShon Brooks ($1,210,080), and Kris Joseph ($788,872), which adds up to a figure of $24,104,807. That’s a difference of $2,208,848. So Bogans’s contract only needs to be that $2.2 million figure, right?

Wrong.

The trick lies in something called “base year compensation,” a relic from the old collective bargaining agreement. It’s supposed to prevent teams from signing players specifically to help facilitate trades. In a sign-and-trade deal, the player’s salary is either his previous salary or 50% of his new salary, whichever is greater.

In Bogans’s case, his previous salary is the veteran’s minimum, around $1.2 millon. That’s not going to work. So the $2.2 million figure has to be 50% of his new salary.

That means that to make this trade work, Bogans’s starting salary is going to be a little over $4.4 million next season, or nearly quadruple his salary last season. Bogans has never had a salary over $2.6 million.

It doesn’t end there. Contracts that are signed as part of sign-and-trade transactions are for a minimum of three years, which would set Bogans’s earnings at $13.2 million over three seasons at a minimum. If the standard 4.5% raises are included in the contract, that’d push the contract to $13.85 million — just a little under Bogans’s entire career earnings ($14.1 million).

For the record: only year one has to be guaranteed in any sign-and-trade contract, so there’s a chance that Bogans will “only” earn $4.4 million next season and that’s that. You think he’d mind? He made $4.7 million in the last four seasons combined.

As a “3 & D” guy I respect: enjoy your new contract, Keith Bogans.

As always, I lean heavily on my own interpretation of Larry Coon’s CBA FAQ, one of the greatest documents known to man. Am I wrong? Is there an error? Let me know.