Jdiddy701 wrote:bwgood77 wrote:MrMiyagi wrote:That's gonna be a no from me, dawg.
We are $42 million over the cap next year, not even including Craig, Okogie, Bazley, Landale, any of the minimums or other guys we keep.
If we cut Paul and cut ALL those guys loose, we are STILL $27 million over. If we traded Ayton just for cap space, cut Paul, didn't bring back Craig, Okogie or any expiring, we would still only be like $5 million under the cap.
We have capped ourselves out for the foreseeable future even when Paul is gone. It will be Book, KD, Ayton (or what we trade him for) , anyone we re-sign from bird rights like Craig and Okogie, Ish, maybe Bazley, a tax MLE guy (like $7 million) and a 2nd rounder this year.
Then we get a first rounder in 24. Even with just all those guys and spending exceptions, we are probably in the tax.
So not only can we not sign Kyrie, but no one getting paid over like $7 million.
Thanks for that info. Sounds like we would have to offer DA, if we were to get Kyrie. I think that’s a deal James Jones does. The Mavs would definitely do it. I just do not see Kyrie extending in Dallas. Something tells me that KD and Kyrie want to prove to Brooklyn that those two can win together. That motivation will only help us.
What’s pretty frustrating is that a trio of Book-KD-Ayton should be very good! Y’all can call me a hater all you want but the reason we may not be as good as we should be is because of Ayton. I know what I’m getting out of Book, I know what I’m getting out of KD (if he plays), I have no idea what I’m getting out of DA. Our team success has always relied on Ayton’s potential.
We have only seen three games of DA with KD, maybe it will be great, we just have to wait and see.
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One thing about DA this season rarely mentioned is that he is the one player left who has played with the MOST different mish mashes of lineups. I have always said that a team who has consistency, cohesion, unity, and gets more used to playing together over time is great. That is why we kept getting better with Book, Bridges, the Cams, Ayton, etc, then with Paul, him and Book struggled early playing together but soon got past that and then we got better and better. We lost to a more experienced team in the finals who had a superstar getting to the line and who changed their lineup to go big when they realized we only had Ayton (who had played well early in the series). So when they played Giannis and Lopez with a lot of Portis, and we had an injured Saric and had to rely on Kaminsky, the series became tougher.
Then we simply had a bad series for the last 5 games last year, which was obviously primarily because of Paul and his failure to maintain his midrange game, defend, not foul, limit turnovers, etc. I always thought he was injured, given he fouled out in one game, had more turnovers than assists in one, and then got picked on on defense....on top of not having his midrange game. Outside of those 5 games we got better and better for 2 years straight while not realizing the full potential of Bridges and Cam yet. I never bought into the "we will never win with this crew" given we were a young team only getting better who blew a series primarily because of Paul,at least in my opinion.
Back to DA, the effort doesn't appear to always be there but the consistency in lineups and teammates he has played with, how often he get the ball,players he has to rely on defensive switches with, whether everyone in lineups with 3rd stringers, knows where to be, etc, has been all over the place. When you are playing with different players every game, then getting healthy, then making a major trade losing the ONE guy you did play most of your games with, then not having Mikal or Cam (or KD), then having KD for a few games, then not having him, etc. That makes things a hell of a lot more difficult.
I think we would make the Kyrie trade too. It would make us better if everyone played, though I imagine our rebounding and play from bigs would suffer.
Even when Ayton doesn't score much or shoot much, his gravity really does help things as well. There are constantly guys cheating way off their men to stay close to him. Unfortunately now it's not Bridges and Cam getting the open shots, but Okogie and Craig.