frankenwolf wrote:shrink wrote:I agree with everybody here. Good for Josh to get paid $8 mil when he’s a vet min level player, but PHX is betting on using him as a walking trade exception. True, re-signing your own free agents is one of the few ways a team over the second apron can add matching salary, but his contract is only useful if it’s traded, and they don’t have the assets to move him. This is a gamble that they may get assets BEFORE the trade deadline by trading someone else, and before the lux tax becomes due.
I understand the play. We’re in a similar situation to PHX financially and I suggested making a similar gamble on Kyle Anderson. However, I wouldn’t have gone any higher on SloMo than the tax-payer MLE ($5,168,000) (and Anderson is worth that) — Okogie is a worse player and he got offered much more.
So, correct me if I'm wrong, since PHO is over the 2nd apron, they can not combine outgoing players, right? Who would trade for JO and that $8M salary just to make PHO better? I don't like that addition, but I'm not an NBA GM/POBO either.
Yes, you’re correct, they can’t aggregate this salary with another player’s salary to match. So if they trade Okogie later, it will need to be for a player or two that make less than $8 mil.
The fact that Okogie’s second season is non-guaranteed may effectively make the contract an expiring, but expirings only have value if they are taking back bad future money. Unfortunately for PHX, it’s hard to imagine that another team’s contract for a useful player is simultaneously bad enough at under $8 mil that many would prefer Okogie at $8 mil. This means PHX would need to incentivize the trade, and they really don’t have many assets left on their roster to provide those incentives. I imagine that for anyone that could help them, they’d need to give up their 2031 1st. Even then, there are few players that can help the, enough that are playing on an contract under $8 mil.