I meant to respond to the first reply in the chain, not the OP itself. But no big deal, it's the same concept

Anyway what I was trying to convey is reducing the cap hit and having salary paid outside of it is a dangerous precedent. If you're allowed to split a 45 mil contract as 30 on the cap/15 on the side, players and owners can argue that it's also fine to split it 25/20, 15/30 etc. If the idea of splitting a contract is added to the CBA then the NBA is going to have a hard time stopping an MVP from signing a 5 mil contract with the owner paying them 60 mil outside of the cap. Maybe it wont get that extreme but it's circumventing the cap in ways that would be really bad for the league.