ShootingtheJ wrote:tedbrogen wrote:soxperry wrote:Upon looking at our salary table, the big pivot point is whether we get that injured player exception for Dame or not. If we do, it makes things very simple and we have a lot of flexibility. If not, we are likely to lose one of them. Making a trade of kuzma or pc to dump salary doesn't help this at all since we dont have bird rights on kpj or trent. It would only impact being able to pay our bird rights players more...and im not sure thats a huge priority. The one exception might be Brook if they deem him "still important."
Scenario 1: Dame is out the full year. Easy. You can now pay Kpj and Gary up to 14.1 each. One gets a multi year deal and the other gets a one year deal. There are good arguments for each, and theres an argument that we could ditch one of them if the right player is available in free agency. But thats too many variables for now.
Scenario 2: Dame thinks he can get back by playoffs and we dont access the exception. Now we can either split the mle between kpj and gary, give one the mle and the other the bae (assuming another team doesn't outbid), or give one the mle and let the other walk.
The rest of the table is pretty straightforward.
The following is Scenario 2, sans injury exception:
Guaranteed:
Giannis: 54M
Dame: 54M
Kuzma: 22M
Pat: 9M
AJ: 2.3M
Andre: 2.2M
If we assume the following (just to get a feel)
Bobby: 15M
Brook: 7M
Rollins: 5M
Sims: 2.4M
Mle: 14.1M (kpj or trent or fa)
Bae: 5.1M (fa)
One Vet Min: 2.4M
This puts us less than 100k under the first apron which we are now hard capped at due to mle and/or bae usage. So you can see how helpful the injured player exception would be, especially if we use it on kpj or gary instead of a fa. That way, it serves as a bridge to an off-season where they are now early bird eligible rather than a free agent who we would then struggle to keep.
I hope this was coherent enough. The more tried to explain the situation the more i realized how open ended it is.
To me this reads like an easy case to let Brook walk and use that TPE on an actual useful player and to cap Bobby’s first year salary at the MLE amount because no one is paying him more than that and it buys them breathing room under the first apron.
Also I think KPJ is easily retained with a two year BAE deal if you give him a player option in year two.
I agree that letting Brook walk is a no brainer.
Tyler Smith is another guaranteed contract for next year, only $1.95 million.
thanks, not sure how i missed him.
as for the comment about KPJ above since i'm too lazy to do another post:
yeah, that might work, but if he takes a leap getting 30+ minutes per game next season we would then be looking at him opting out and starting a bid war. in which case he's gone because we can only pay him a max of around 11 or 12M with early bird rights. maybe you dont have to give him the full MLE, but the MLE allows you to get him for multiple years and eventually have access to his full bird rights.
look, you may not think he's going to hit his ceiling. that's a perfectly fine opinion to have. but he is the best chance we have at a real needle moving player. we need to be very smart with his contract. we are placing a bet. for his skill set, i think 2 years at 14, no player options, is a very good move.
