Scoot McGroot wrote:Yeah, it helps offset the future cost of Calderon by one year, but he's owed 3 years at nearly $30 million.
Next off-season, we could have enough salary cap space for essentially 2 maximum salary contracts, providing we renounce our Bird rights to Murphy, Dunleavy, Foster, etc. If we trade for Calderon, we would have enough cap space for on max guy, and then around $5 million left.
Now, I'm not saying we're going to go out and sign a max salary guy, but cap space can be used to absorb contracts in trades as well. Maybe we could help out a luxury tax bound team, or get someone for free. Who knows. Either way, I'd prefer maximum flexibility to make a move, as opposed to being stuck with an NBA average starting PG in Jose Calderon.
This mentality was good for the last 2 years, but next summer that mentality is horrible. The best players are all at SF (the same position as Granger and George)
Melo, Butler, Howard, Prince, Battier, Green, Kirilenko, Barnes, Dunleavy, Thornton, Hill, Dudley, T.Young, etc.
Of the non-SF free agents, we have Parker, Murphy, Yi, Dalembert, Chandler, Landry, Pryzbilla, Andre Miller, J-Rich, Hawes (R), Conley (R), Brooks (R), Collison, Kristic, Nene, Perkins, and maybe a few others.
Now there may be a few names there, but no one in that crowd besides Melo is max worthy and IMO, there is only two places he goes…Denver or NY. I don’t see that many teams maneuvering to make room for these free agents. Many of those players are wanting to play for well established teams where they are the missing piece (like Perkins, Nene, Chandler, Dalembert, J-Rich, etc.). I can see maybe Hawes or Collison being interested in Indy, but not much others.
As far as teams in the tax, the hardest hit ones have major expiring this year:
Utah: Kirilenko, New Orleans: Peja, Denver: Martin. Competitors may be Milwaukee with Redd or Memphis with Randolph. The only teams over the tax next year as of right not are Lakers, Boston and Orlando. Only Orlando has pieces that they may be willing to move like Lewis, Nelson, Gortat, Pietrus, Reddick, Bass. But looking at their track record, I don’t think they will just freely give anyone up unless it is a contract you don’t want. Then you can move into players like Brand who Philly would love to unload, but the incentive pieces like Turner and Iggy are, once again, at your strongest position.
Which gets me down to what other teams are not over the tax, but may be watching their budget. Dallas? Terry is available but you say you don’t want him. Atlanta…Marvin Williams and Mike Bibby? Sounds like your best bet. Maybe a dump of Hinrich if Arenas is not dumpable. Maybe.
Long story short, next year is a horrible summer to be a non-major market team with bunches of money and with your strongest position being SF.