SOUL wrote:Lmao, our fans finally get a good team with guys 3-4 years away from their prime and we start wondering about ceilings, trying to penny-pinch our young players on "prove it" restricted contracts and have threads trashing Franz and calling Suggs delusional??
Knightro has already laid out that all of these guys can get paid and extended pretty much without apron concerns. May start to get tricky once we have Black/Jett/TDS stuff but that's a bit down the line, and also would be tricky even under the old CBA. Obviously, I want them to exercise some caution in the numbers they throw out, but regardless of the numbers, all of these guys can be tradable too since they're young and talented. We've seen a lot of teams be able to move on from slight or even HUGE overpays if that's what they turn out to be. The real terrible contracts are for bit players like Mozgov, Biyombo, or older guys with NTCs like Beal, or injury-related stuff with LaVine, etc.
Almost feels like some of us want to be teams like the Clippers or Nets who throw away young guys and try to buy a title which usually never works. Look at the Nets and Clippers. Last team that worked for was the Heat and that was literally because it was LeBron James and Bosh lol. Homegrown talent has been the way the last 10~ years and then you sprinkle in the extra ingredients as they grow. Even Kawhi was surrounded by a lot of homegrown Raps.
I did excel table of salary, looked at salary projections and played around projections of future salaries of role players, draft picks and probably wasted 2hours of my life.
After all that, i have no clue how Knighto can with straight face claim that current projections don't put Magic over luxury as soon as next year, over first apron in 2026-27.
Any sort of Suggs $30M type resign + Banchero's max that would start at $42,53M rate ( could go as high as $51M if he fits Derrick Rose rule) would lead to situation like this:
Banchero $42,53
Franz $41,75
Suggs some $34M
KCP $21,6M
Carter $18,1
Isaac $14,50
Black $10,1
Goga $7,6
Howar $7,33
daSilva $3,99
random pick 2025 $3,2
random pick 2026 $3,6M
That is over a luxury cap team ( $206M luxury, $208M invested ) and is missing 3 players to even make 15 men roster + 2 two way contracts.
Any type of resign (Mortiz, usage of MLE, Cole Anthony and his team option of $13M , Gary Harris, whoever) leads you over first apron set at $225M. Resign of Mortiz AND player option of Cole ( let's assume 15+13 M) leds you to second apron level.
This ofc assumes we will sign nobody in 2025 and no trades will ever occur, and that won't happen.
But in same time it's not outside of relm of possibility that Banchero can start on two allstar teams in near future ( especially if Embiid has no desire to play regular season that much) , and by default, he would fit Derrick Rose rule and active 30% max, and his starting salary would went from $43M to over $51M a year.
Anyway, salary situation on team with 2 max contracts + one massive contract isn't as ideal as you would think. Salary cap will go up for that 2026-27, but that is also year that is used to calculate Banchero's max, so majority of "new money" will just end up absorbed by his new contract.
At some point it is realistic to expect makeup trade to cut down roster quantity and find starting PG, that would be yet another big contract that would resign over span of next few years.
I don't know, we don't know what will team do next, but my point is, salary cap situation is bit more complicated than it looks at first look. You can easly be in situation that in 2027-28 you enter season with Suggs, Banchero, Franz ,Carter and Isaac holding $174M of your salary cap and 2 out of 5 are washed up and broken ( not that they are that healthy today, 3 years younger), in league where salary cap starts at $187M that year (estimated projections by league).
Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. -John Lennon