One benefit of being around the cap floor in the NBA is you have the flexibility and rare ability to re-negotiate a player’s salary for the current season.
This appears to be the case with the 76ers and Robert Covington.
Covington signed a four-year, $50 million extension with the 76ers this off-season that was set to kick in for the 2018-19 season.
According to Marc Stein, the 76ers have $15.1 million in cap space to use this season and plan to give it to Covington with a re-structuring of his contract.
His new projected salary would be $16.7 million for the 2017-18 season and here is the projected outlook for his contract moving forward courtesy of NBC Sports:
2017-18: $1,577,230 $16,698,103
2018-19: $10,018,862
2019-20: $9,217,353
2020-21: $8,415,844
2021-22: $7,614,335
This is a really savvy move for the 76ers. Why not pay Covington more now when they have no other use for the cap space and save a great deal of money down the line as they try to continue building their roster. They will likely have a huge value contract for him moving forward with the deal.
