Twinkie defense wrote:statsman wrote:Twinkie defense wrote:The main thing they are worried about is signing Horford to a portion of the non-taxpayer MLE which would hard cap them at the first apron and prevent them from matching a RFA offer to Kuminga from another team - that and wanting to use Kuminga's salary as filler in a trade.
Xrdta, statsman etc. please correct me if I've gotten this wrong!

I don't think there are any plans to sign Horford to more than the taxpayer MLE. But using the taxpayer MLE hard caps a team at the 2nd apron.
Warriors are currently $17.4 mil under the tax threshold. Could they use the Taxpayer MLE on Horford while under the tax threshold?
Zach ZoBell wrote:A team can use Taxpayer MLE if the team’s Apron Team Salary immediately following their use of the TMLE is above the First Apron.
Warriors are currently $25,012,673 under the first apron so I don't see how they could use the taxpayer MLE without first signing Kuminga. And if they instead use some portion (say $5,685,000) of the non-taxpayer MLE they are hard-capped at the first apron and have only $19,327,673 left to pay Kuminga, and that is before signing Melton, GPII, and Seth Curry (which count against the cap at $2,545,386 each).
So if Kuminga doesn't sign anything by October 1 that does sort of bollocks up the Warriors plans to fill out their roster.
If Kuminga is a holdout maybe Warriors are best off justing signing their guys and telling Kuminga, sorry, we only have $11 mil left for you now.
Maybe that is their plan - reduce the Warriors' ability to offer Kuminga a competitive contract so another team can swoop in and outbid them.
No team has even $11 mil in cap space though, and Warriors could still clear space to match an offer if they needed to.