If X is $5 million a year, then they need to get a coach worth $5 million/year I won't get into whether Pry is worth that, but it's irrelevant. If the contract is $5 million/year for 5 years. Then if you fire him after 3 then you're gonna owe some percentage of what is left ($10 million) If the contract is $10 million/year then to buy out those last 2 years it'd be $20 million So in essence, a better coach would be a larger buyout because that's what that coach would demand on the market. VT could hire Justin Hamilton as HC and pay him $200k and have a very small buyout...but is that worth it?