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Wildcats confident of keeping key players

Jermaine Beal. Pic: WA News

Perth Wildcats managing director Nick Marvin is confident he will be able to fit the majority of the NBL champions' talent-laden roster under the salary and player points caps next season.

Talks are set to resume today with representatives of out-of-contract key players, including star import Jermaine Beal and Australian trio Damian Martin, Jesse Wagstaff and Tom Jervis.

NBA hopeful James Ennis will leave Perth next week and is the only player definitely on the way out, while Mathiang Muo will return from an Achilles injury which kept him sidelined throughout the recently-completed season.

Initial player points values were released by the NBL to clubs last week, but players are allowed to challenge their ratings.

Final ratings will be made public.

Marvin was encouraged by the initial assessments and said discussions with his out-of-contract players had been promising.

"The bottom line is that for the first time in a long time I actually think most of the players do want to stay and I think that, given the points system, we can actually keep most of them," Marvin said.

"It's quite exciting and I'm looking forward to getting most of it done in the next two weeks.

"The next step is for their agents to call back and tell us what they're asking for.

"I expect those conversations to happen starting (today). What excites me about this team is they're pretty much a team-oriented group of players and I actually think this time the team spirit will allow us to keep most of the key players."

The Wildcats are yet to decide whether they will take advantage of the new marquee import rule, to be introduced next season.

The rule will see nine players at each club contracted under a salary cap of $850,000, with a marquee player allowed to be paid outside the cap.

But any money the marquee player is paid above a $150,000 ceiling will attract a 25 per cent luxury tax, which will go into a central pool to be redistributed by the league.

"We haven't made a decision as a club whether we're going to activate it, for a couple of reasons," Marvin said.

"It depends on the talent and also in its first year we would lean on the conservative side so as not to create too much of a schism in the team.

"If we can actually fit someone in as a normal import, that would be our preferred option."