Detroit Pistons
This includes a projected signing that is not yet official, so these figures are an estimate.
Payroll (salaries, dead money, and drafted-rookie holds) is $154.6M, which is $10.4M under the $165.0M cap. What erases the room is $35.7M in cap holds for their own free agents; those count against the cap only, never the tax or aprons. Renouncing every free-agent hold (keeping draft picks) would open $10.4M of room, at the cost of their Bird rights.
So the Pistons are "over the cap" only in the cap-room sense. Like most of the league they build through exceptions (their mid-level if their tier allows one, minimums) and Bird rights to re-sign their own players.
The rule behind this
Cap space is how far a team's cap salary sits below the salary cap. It is the most flexible way to add players: cap space can absorb any contract up to its size, with no matching rules.
More Pistons questions
Numbers come straight from the live Pistons cap sheet, recomputed whenever the data updates.