The Miami Heat couldn’t have give Dwyane Wade a deal similar to Dirk Nowitzki and retained Hassan Whiteside.
The Dallas Mavericks agreed to pay Dirk Nowitzki $50 million over two years. Given the superficial similarity between Dwyane Wade and Notwitzki, various pundits immediately took to Twitter to call out the Miami Heat for not giving Wade a similar deal.
The Dallas Mavericks showing loyalty to Dirk Nowitzki that the Miami Heat wouldn't for Dwyane Wade.
— Chris Walder (@WalderSports) July 22, 2016
The Heat should do this with Dwyane Wa … oh. https://t.co/bl7tOjce23
— Mike Prada. (PRAY-duh) (@MikePradaNBA) July 22, 2016
Like Wade, Notwizki is an aging star who remains the face of the franchise. In fact, at 38, Nowitzki is four years older than Wade. Like Wade, Notwizki has taken pay cuts so his team can remain competitive. Last year, while Wade made $20 million, Nowitzki made just over $8 million.
What many don’t understand is that Notwizki’s paycut and trust in the Maverick’s organization facilitated his current $50 million payday.
How? Because as free agency began, the Mavs had a mere $12 million cap hold on Nowitzki. For salary cap calculations, a free agent’s cap hold is treated as the player’s salary. It’s important to note that Dirk’s cap hold was less than his eventual salary. This simple fact facilitated everything else.
Dirk’s low cap hold allowed the Mavs to stay under the salary cap while signing Harrison Barnes to a max contract and absorbing Andrew Bogut’s salary.
After using Dirk’s low cap hold to sign other free agents, the Mavs could then take care of Dirk. Since they had Bird rights for Notwizki, the Mavs were allowed to exceed the salary cap to sign him. Thus, the low cap hold allowed the Mavs to strengthen their team while ‘thanking’ their franchise player.
In Miami, the situation was different.
The Heat had to sign Hassan Whiteside, but they did not have Bird rights for him. Therefore, they could not exceed the cap to sign Whiteside.
Although the Heat had Bird rights for Wade, unlike Notwizki, Wade’s $30 million cap hold was more than his eventual salary.
Therefore, the Heat couldn’t play cap games the way Dallas could. They couldn’t use a low cap hold to sign Whiteside, and then take care of Wade. Instead, they had to sign both Wade and Whiteside with available cap space.
We will debate for years whether or not the Heat did the right thing in prioritizing Whiteside over Wade. But, if you accept that the Heat had to give Whiteside a max contract, then they offered Wade all the money they had left.