Wes Mathews and free agency

Ross Siler of sltrib.com explains why re-signing Mathews will not be as easy as it seems:

"Matthews made the leap from undrafted rookie to full-time starter while playing on a one-year minimum contract this season. As a result, Matthews will be a restricted free agent this summer and re-signing him is at the top of the Jazz's list of priorities.

The NBA's free-agent rules are structured such that teams that are over the salary cap (like the Jazz) have the ability to re-sign their own free agents. If they wanted, the Jazz could re-sign Carlos Boozer to a six-year deal worth in excess of $100 million.

Of course, the luxury tax and its dollar-for-dollar penalties serve as a deterrent to doing so. But the NBA has exceptions (and incentives) that make it easier for teams to re-sign their own players who've spent three or two years with them.

The Jazz have such so-called Bird rights to Boozer, Kyle Korver and Kyrylo Fesenko. Matthews, however, is not yet a Bird-qualifying free agent as he's only played one season with the Jazz.

The exception that allows the Jazz to re-sign a free agent like Matthews who has not yet qualified for Bird rights would offer him a salary of $914,538 for next season - - not exactly starting shooting guard money in today's NBA.

So the Jazz likely have to look to two other exceptions when it comes to re-signing Matthews. Most likely, they will have to use all or most of their midlevel exception, which was worth $5.854 million last season.

The Jazz could sign Matthews to a five-year deal worth as much $34 million should they offer their full midlevel exception over the maximum number of years. But the Jazz aren't going to be able to offer more than that.

(It's also worth noting that because they're likely going to have to use all or most of their midlevel to re-sign Matthews, the Jazz won't have the full exception at their disposal to go spending on another free agent should Boozer sign elsewhere this summer.)

There's another exception - - the bi-annual exception - - that the Jazz could use in re-signing Matthews. That calls for a salary of $2.08 million next season as part of a two-year, $4.3 million deal. The midlevel exception, though, offers a bigger and better deal.

Even though they only have these limited exceptions to use in re-signing Matthews, the Jazz at least don't have to worry about some team with significant salary-cap space (the Knicks, hypothetically) sweeping in and signing Matthews to a contract they can't match.

The NBA effectively closed that loophole after Gilbert Arenas left Golden State for Washington. Now the biggest contract a team can offer a first- or second-year player (like Matthews) is for the league's average salary.

Since the midlevel exception also is tied to the average salary, that enables the Jazz to match on any Matthews deal. Again, though, the Jazz's ability to re-sign Matthews is tied to the midlevel exception.

(Although the league closed the Arenas loophole, a team with significant space could sign Matthews to a deal that called for him to make the average salary in Year 1, average salary plus an 8 percent raise in Year 2 and then salaries of $10 million or more in Years 3, 4 and 5. This is graduate level free agency, though, and I can't imagine a team signing Matthews to a deal anything like that.)"