What is the “Gilbert Arenas” provision?
With the previous CBA it was sometimes possible to sign restricted free agents to offer sheets their original teams couldn’t match. This happened when a player was an Early Bird or Non-Bird free agent (see question number 19) and the team didn’t have enough cap room to match a sufficiently large offer. For example, Gilbert Arenas was Golden State’s second round draft pick in 2001, and became an Early Bird free agent in 2003. Golden State therefore could only match an offer sheet (or sign Arenas themselves) for up to the average salary (see question number 24), which was about $4.9 million. Washington signed Arenas to an offer sheet with a starting salary of about $8.5 million, which Golden State was powerless to match. This loophole was addressed in the current CBA (although not closed completely — see below). Teams are now limited in the salary they can offer in an offer sheet to a restricted free agent with one or two years in the league. The first-year salary in the offer sheet can
