1. The Heat buy out Bosh’s contract.
Bosh’s contract has almost $79 million in guaranteed salary left on it over the next three years. Any buyout would be a) massive and b) a salary cap crusher, presuming Bosh doesn’t concede much salary. Even if Bosh agreed to a 50-percent buyout, the salary cap hit to the Heat over three years is too heavy to consider.
That’s why the Heat would prefer a medical retirement. Bosh would still get all of his money, but the cap hit to the Heat would disappear as of a year after his final game. That’d give Miami another $25 million in cap space in the 2017 offseason.
This is not to accuse the Heat of prioritizing cap space over Bosh’s career — there’s no doubt that Miami would rather have a healthy, expensive Bosh than this whole situation. But so long as a medical retirement remains a possibility, and so long as Bosh is uninterested in giving up most of his guaranteed salary, a buyout makes no sense.
Of course, there’s little reason for Miami to push for medical retirement so long as Bosh insists he can play. A medical retirement is really just cap relief on a waived player. To apply for the relief, the Heat would need to waive Bosh and ask the league for the injury exclusion that would remove Bosh’s salary from the Heat’s cap sheet. A doctor chosen jointly by the league and players’ union would determine if playing with Bosh’s condition represents a medically unacceptable risk.
If so, in Feb. 2017, the Heat would get the cap relief, which would mostly affect next season. But if Bosh came back to play at least 25 games for another team next season (or even this season), the Heat’s cap relief would disappear. If the Heat used the cap space in the summer and lost it once Bosh played his 25th game in the 2017-18 season, the result could be an enormous luxury tax bill and a complete annihilation of the team’s flexibility.
So long as Bosh is convinced he can play, there’s no incentive for the Heat to negotiate a buyout or to straight-up waive him in hopes of a medical retirement. Which brings us to ...
