OK, I'm just sort of looking for someone to check my work.

Closely reading the CBA FAQ, I gather that if a player has an Early Termination option in his contract, the value of the ETO year IS counted when adding up the value of his trade bonus, but the value of the bonus IS NOT applied to his ETO year for salary cap purposes.

So here's how to calculate Salmons' cap value.

His current contract calls for him to be paid

08/09: $5.104

09/10: $5.456 (ETO for 2010/11 to be exercised at end of this year)

10/11: $5.808

Now, his season is about 65% over, so his remaining 08/09 salary is only about $1.805M.  Thus is total remaining salary for adding up the trade kicker is $13.069M.  15% of this is $1.96M. That's the amount Salmons gets as a bonus for being traded.

He gets paid the $1.96M now, but it's applied over the remainder of his contract, excluding the ETO (if I understand it correctly). This means the trade bonus applies only to this year and next year's cap, in proportion to his salary.

I'm not sure if it applies in proportion to his annual or his remaining salary.  Since it's calculated based on his remaining salary, I'm going to assume it's applied to the cap in the same way (if I'm wrong, someone speak up).  That means his cap value goes up $487K this year and $1.473M next year, making his total cap hits:

08/09: $5.591

09/10: $6.929 (ETO for 2010/11 to be exercised at end of this year)

10/11: $5.808

So at the end of the day, that puts the Bulls cap position next year somewhat worse, but we pick up another million in 2010 vs. where we were with Noc.  So that's a moderate improvement, I suppose.