{"id":187500,"date":"2025-07-22T14:25:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T14:25:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/187500\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T14:25:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T14:25:11","slug":"wizards-save-8mm-with-smart-wesley-buyouts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/187500\/","title":{"rendered":"Wizards Save $8MM+ With Smart, Wesley Buyouts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Wizards\u2018 recent <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hoopsrumors.com\/2025\/07\/marcus-smart-to-join-lakers-after-buyout-with-wizards.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">buyout<\/a> <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hoopsrumors.com\/2025\/07\/blake-wesley-agrees-to-buyout-with-wizards.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">agreements<\/a> with guards <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/s\/smartma01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.hoopsrumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-07-22_bbr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Marcus Smart<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/w\/weslebl01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.hoopsrumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-07-22_bbr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Blake Wesley<\/a> have reduced the team\u2019s salary by more than $8MM.<\/p>\n<p>As Keith Smith of Spotrac <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/KeithSmithNBA\/status\/1947420988309991770\" rel=\"nofollow\">tweets<\/a>, Smart gave up $6.8MM of his $21.59MM salary as part of his buyout with Washington, while Wesley forfeited roughly $1.38MM of his $4.73MM salary. In total, the two players now count toward the Wizards\u2019 cap for $18,134,313 instead of $26,313,184.<\/p>\n<p>Smart is set to sign a two-year, $10.5MM deal with the Lakers once he clears waivers. It\u2019s unclear where Wesley will land next, but he likely wouldn\u2019t have given up a portion of his salary unless he was confident about having another opportunity lined up.<\/p>\n<p>The Wizards won\u2019t technically create any cap room as a result of the moves, since they\u2019re still operating as an over-the-cap team. But their salary for cap purposes is now down to approximately $153.8MM, which is more than $34MM below the luxury tax line ($187.9MM). They also have nearly $39MM in flexibility below the first <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hoopsrumors.com\/2025\/01\/hoops-rumors-glossary-tax-aprons-2.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">tax apron<\/a> ($195.95MM) after accounting for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/m\/middlkh01.html?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.hoopsrumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-07-22_bbr\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Khris Middleton<\/a>\u2018s $3.22MM in unlikely incentives.<\/p>\n<p>The cap savings created by the Smart and Wesley buyouts will put the Wizards in an even better position to become a facilitator in trades during the rest of the 2025 offseason and into the 2025\/26 regular season.<\/p>\n<p>Clubs around the NBA who are looking to shed salary or who need a third team to take on a contract to make a trade work will likely make the Wizards\u2019 front office one of their first calls. Washington would presumably be willing to accommodate that sort of deal if sweeteners such as draft assets or a promising young prospect are attached.<\/p>\n<p>The Wizards still have their full non-taxpayer <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hoopsrumors.com\/2025\/07\/how-teams-are-using-2025-26-mid-level-exceptions.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">mid-level exception<\/a> ($14.1MM), along with two <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hoopsrumors.com\/2012\/02\/outstanding-trade-exceptions.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">trade exceptions<\/a> worth $13.45MM and $9.9MM. While they wouldn\u2019t be able to combine those exceptions to acquire a player earning more than $14.1MM, they could use all three separately to trade for players whose salaries fit within the limits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Wizards\u2018 recent buyout agreements with guards Marcus Smart and Blake Wesley have reduced the team\u2019s salary by&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":187501,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3780],"tags":[7,7008,326,6,682,468,3892,683],"class_list":{"0":"post-187500","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-washington-wizards","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-blake-wesley","10":"tag-marcus-smart","11":"tag-nba","12":"tag-washington","13":"tag-washington-wizards","14":"tag-washingtonwizards","15":"tag-wizards"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114897349836866693","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=187500"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/187500\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=187500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=187500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=187500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}