Geezers' MPE not counting against cap?

Question from a franchise struggling to stay under the MLE-caused hard cap at apron:

"I also note that because the NBA doesn’t want teams to avoid signing veteran players in favor of cheaper, younger players, the reimburses clubs who sign veterans with three or more years of experience to one-year, minimum salary contracts. Those deals will only count against the cap – and against a team’s bank balance – for $1,669,178, the minimum salary for a player with two years of experience. If this is the case, could I still offer a more experienced player a 1yr contract at Minimum salary?"


Answer:

At first I thought your analysis was incorrect. Per cbafaq.com Q22:

"When a player has been in the NBA for three or more seasons, and is playing under a one-year, 10-day or Rest-of-Season contract at the minimum salary, the reimburses the team for part of his salary -- any amount above the minimum salary for a two-year veteran. For example, the minimum salary for a two-year veteran in 2017-18 is $1,471,382, so for a ten-year veteran, with a minimum salary of $2,328,652, the would reimburse the team $857,270. Only the two-year minimum salary is included in the team salary, not the player's full salary. They do this so teams won't shy away from signing older veterans simply because they are more expensive than younger veterans."

So he mentions money, but not explicitly cap hits.

So I always thought it was just a check the sent the team every month, but no influence on the cap sheet.

Then I read it 11 more times.

Every time the part "included in the team salary" puzzled me more and more.

Was our old friend Larry Coon hinting at the cap hit after all?

And then I checked. And BOOM:

www.spotrac.com/nba/los-angeles-lakers/cap/

Always fun to find out we were doing something wrong for the last decade!

So unless somebody can prove me wrong in the next 24 hours, I will proceed to correct about 5437 wrong cells in the spreadsheet