Here.

said Commissioner David Stern recently, "nobody in the NBA understands the intricacies of the salary cap better than Irwin Mandel"

If there’s a way not to pay, the Bulls will find it. They can still not re-sign Gordon w/ the excuse that they won’t know for sure about James until… whenever. Rightly so, in my opinion, although I think they should be willing to pay the tax and feel lucky if they don’t have to. If they’re not going to pay the tax to re-sign Gordon, they aren’t going to take the gamble that they’ll get James’s salary off the books, and that’s if that’s the correct interpretation.

(t/f/j: Tommy Udo 6 linked that in the comments)

makes my spidey senses tingle

a) It would be easier if James actually wants to retire and hands in his papers. If he doesn’t, you could be looking at a Darius Miles situation who was medically retired – and then came back with another team. The independent doctor only confirms that the player shouldn’t play anymore to get him off the cap and clear his roster spot, not that he can’t. If he does, he is more like Eric Snow and you don’t have that looming problem. The next CBA should make things clearer on this, but this won’t happen until 2011.

b) Bigger problem: The league denied the Knicks petition for a disabled player exception in the Cuttino Mobley case, precisely because the “injury” was sustained while playing for another team. While medical retirement is a different animal, I would assume the league won’t look favorably/differently on the James case.

Some of you might remember from back when the trade went down I came to the conclusion he’d come off the cap and not count for luxury tax purposes, but back-tracked when I read things in more detail.

Of course, I read Larry Coon’s CBA FAQ, and the guy making the assertion here about the LT is… Larry Coon, so I guess that’s a new wrinkle.

One problem I see is that I don’t know if the NBA prospectively rule on such things. They usually wait until it becomes an actual, live issue. That is, I don’t think they’re going to pre-emptively say James doesn’t count; more likly they’d wait until the Bulls were actually over the LT, at the end of next year.

Of course, that’d be a problem for the Bulls, since it’d mean they would have to make their decisions now without actually knowing if James counts for LT purposes.