At the conclusion of the Houston Rocket’s final regular season game against Oklahoma City on Tuesday night, Clint Capela has officially failed to earn two incentives each worth $500,000.
Capela signed a five-year deal during the 2018 offseason worth $80 million guaranteed with an additional $10 million in incentives. He has three different sets of incentives which total $2 million that he can earn each season. For the 2018-19 season, he has a base salary of $13.79 million. If he were to hit all three of his incentives, his salary would’ve adjusted to $15.79 million.
Capela can earn $500,000 if he plays at least 2,000 regular season minutes and averages at least 30% defensive rebounding percentage (DREB%). He finished the season averaging 27.6% DREB%, well short of the 30% required.
Last season he averaged 30.8% DREB%, deeming this incentive as likely. This means that throughout the 2018-19 season, his salary carried an additional $500,000 to reflect this incentive. He will now have his salary adjusted, lowering his 2018-19 salary from $15.29M to $14.79M.
Capela can earn $500,000 if he averages at least 65% from the free throw line. He will come up just short of that mark while averaging a career-high 63.6% for the season. Last season he averaged 56%, deeming this incentive as unlikely, so it did not reflect his salary throughout the season.
Capela also earns $1 million if he plays at least 2,000 regular season minutes and the Rockets reach the Western Conference finals. Because the Rockets reached the Western Conference finals last season, the incentive is likely and already reflects on his salary. If the Rockets fail to advance past the second round of the playoffs, his salary will be adjusted from $14.79 million back to $13.79 million.
The $500,000 deducted from Capela’s salary will put the Rockets $425,084 below the luxury tax threshold, but according to David Weiner, these figures may be off. Publicly reported salary cap figures for the Rockets had them over the luxury tax threshold after signing Chris Chiozza and Michael Frazier. This caused many to speculate that the Rockets were planning to avoid the luxury tax with the expectation that Capela will fail to reach both his DREB% incentive and free throw shooting incentive.
It is currently unknown exactly how much the Rockets are below the luxury tax threshold or what the source of the discrepancy is for the tax figures to be slightly off. However, Weiner suggests that the Rockets are actually much further below the luxury tax that is being reported, and they were never in danger of finishing over the luxury tax even if Capela were to earn his free throw shooting incentive.
Capela’s 2019-20 salary will now be adjusted from $16.39 million to $15.89 million. The Rockets are currently entering the offseason with $118.78 million guaranteed for six players and $5.66M non-guaranteed for four players.
