First round picks have a set salary “scale” that decreases the later the pick is. Teams are always allowed to sign their first round pick to up to 120% of his scale price, regardless of their salary cap situation. 120% has become custom in the league and it’s extremely rare for a first round player to get under 120% of scale.

Second round picks do not have a special exception allowing teams to sign them. Most teams use the minimum salary exception or cap room to sign second round picks. You are correct that the Clippers used cap space to sign Mann for a 4-year deal instead of the 2 allowed by the minimum salary. It’s also not unheard of for teams to utilize a piece of their MLE to do that–although it’s much more common when teams have the full MLE. Take a rookie minimmum off of the full MLE and you still have about $8.5M to offer a free agent + you can give your rookie a 4-year deal. Use the taxpayer MLE and you only have about $5M left to offer a free agent + your rookie can only get a 3-year deal.

Given that tradeoff, I’d rather have the full $5.9M for a free agent and give a second round rookie a 2-year deal. It’s one less cheap year but they’ll still be restricted, guaranteeing we can keep them if they break out.

So for Amir, LAC can use the minimum exception to offer him a 2-year contract, or they can use a piece of their taxpayer MLE to offer him a 3-year contract (max allowed by taxpayer MLE). However, what Teddy is missing is this: the Clippers have early bird rights on Amir because he’s been with the team for 2 years, so they can give him up to a 4-year deal using that and don’t need to dip into their MLE. Scrubb, on the other hand, is already under contract for next season on a two-way deal, so the team doens’t need to do anything with him this summer.