Why Seth Curry might be switched from the BAE to the MLE

I believe the Dallas Mavericks are still trying to make improvements to the roster. They might be looking at trades or they could be using the Non-taxpayer MLE. This is the largest MLE. It is available to teams that are over the salary cap but below the first tax apron. For these same teams, there is a second exception called the Bi-Annual Exception. In 2019 we used the BAE on Boban Marjanovic. In 2021, we used it on Sterling Brown. It is a valuable exception to get a potential low-end rotation player. When it’s available, you can choose to use it. If you don’t use it, then it’s available again the next year.

The Mavericks are getting to the point of the off-season where there are very few players left who they would need to use the Full MLE on. With that reality, they have a few options.

One of those options is to preserve the BAE for 2024. They can fit Seth Curry’s same exact deal into the Full MLE. It would reduce the MLE to under $8 million, but without anyone worth more than that, it’s not really any loss. They could offer this $7,889,000 to anyone up to 4 years with 5% raises.

I’d expect of all the moves for players that we’ve heard of but haven’t formally been announced (Dante Exum, and Seth Curry) Seth will be the last one announced to leave open this option. The Mavericks would have the benefit of using the MLE for anyone remaining that they’d like to sign, while also preserving the BAE for 2024.