7. What about the MLE? The bi-annual exception?

Teams with cap room have to renounce the MLE / LLE just like they would a free agent. We wouldn't be able to use either of these exceptions next year.

3. How much cap room do we have next year? With a $61 million cap and only $30 million committed, does that mean we can spend $31 million?

Like with everything else related to the CBA, the answer is somewhat complicated.

First, to get cap room in the first place, we have to "renounce" each of our free agents. Essentially, until we do so, a "cap hold" is placed on our salary cap, representing somewhere between 105% and 250% of the player's previous salary. Jeff Green's cap hold, for instance, is $11,139,970, representing 250% of his last year's salary. Cap holds eat into available salary cap space until such time as a free agent is renounced.

Next comes our draft picks. We're in all likelihood going to have both our own and the Clippers' #1 pick next year. Each of these picks carries a cap hold, as well. As of right now, those picks would be 16th and 21st in the draft. For our purposes today, though, let's assume that the Celts improve a bit, and that those picks end up as 20th and 22nd. These two picks combined would have a cap hold of approximately $2.3 million.

Last comes empty roster spots. The salary cap presumes that teams have at least 12 players on its roster. For every player (or cap hold) below 12, the team is "charged" an amount equal to the rookie minimum salary, which will be right around $500,000 next year. Assuming that Bass opts out of his contract and that we renounce all of our free agents, we'd have Pierce, Rondo, Bradley, and Johnson under contract, plus two first rounders. That means we'd have six contracts, and six roster charges. These roster charges are at approximately $500k each, meaning another $3 million in salary.

So what does this all mean? In essence, we have to add approximately $5.3 million to our committed salary for next year to accurately reflect our cap situation. That brings our commitments to $35,810,385, leaving approximately $25 million in cap space.

The Celts are not going to give KG 22m, Ray 15m, and Wilcox and Jeff Green are already off the books. You didn't read that ESPN report? Ugh!

6. Once we've spent up to the cap, can we sign our own free agents with Bird Rights?

No. Once a free agent is renounced, Bird Rights are permanently extinguished. At that point, you can only sign free agents with cap room, or to minimum contracts. That means that if we signed Dwight Howard, it's likely that we wouldn't have the money to afford either Jeff Green or Brandon Bass.

Read and learn, Jabroni!