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Here are the draft picks for the teams reported to be interested in trading for Gortat:

Suns: 16, 31, 59
Mavs: 33
Clippers: 12, 13, 54

Would the Suns or Clippers trade-down a spot or two just to take-on Gortat, or are we looking at unloading Gortat and taking players at 31,33 + our 44? That would possibly mean a high 2nd round pick where we could select one of the biggest droppers from the 1st round and get a PG as-well. We could end-up with Omari Spellman and best SG/PG. Thoughts on scenarios?

Looking at the contracts of those teams, it’s not going to be a roster player trade. The Mavs and clippers don’t even have contracts to send back unless it’s some massive blockbuster for Deandre Jordan. Clippers don’t really have absorb room, suns and Mavs do. Mavericks don’t really have contracts to send back either.

Could just be something like Gortat+2nd rounder for Dallas or Phoenix absorbing him. Handing away another free asset to save money.

NatP4 wrote:Looking at the contracts of those teams, it’s not going to be a roster player trade. The Mavs and clippers don’t even have contracts to send back unless it’s some massive blockbuster for Deandre Jordan. Clippers don’t really have absorb room, suns and Mavs do. Mavericks don’t really have contracts to send back either.

Could just be something like Gortat+2nd rounder for Dallas or Phoenix absorbing him. Handing away another free asset to save money.

Gortat and 44 for Kleber and 33.

Kleber is just a body, but his contract has to be guaranteed by July 15. He's cheap depth but Dallas is about $13.5 million under the salary cap (league year ends on June 30). All they have to do is send back a cheap contract to get it done. Wizards get under the tax (avoiding the repeater tax) and have full use of the MLE this offseason.

Rafael122 wrote:

NatP4 wrote:Looking at the contracts of those teams, it’s not going to be a roster player trade. The Mavs and clippers don’t even have contracts to send back unless it’s some massive blockbuster for Deandre Jordan. Clippers don’t really have absorb room, suns and Mavs do. Mavericks don’t really have contracts to send back either.

Could just be something like Gortat+2nd rounder for Dallas or Phoenix absorbing him. Handing away another free asset to save money.

Gortat and 44 for Kleber and 33.

Kleber is just a body, but his contract has to be guaranteed by July 15. He's cheap depth but Dallas is about $13.5 million under the salary cap (league year ends on June 30). All they have to do is send back a cheap contract to get it done. Wizards get under the tax (avoiding the repeater tax) and have full use of the MLE this offseason.

...and at 33 we take the best dropper in the draft, then use the MLE. Ernie likes using the MLE on players who have "been around", maybe we can get a good one. This is Wizard fan thinking

Rafael122 wrote:

NatP4 wrote:Looking at the contracts of those teams, it’s not going to be a roster player trade. The Mavs and clippers don’t even have contracts to send back unless it’s some massive blockbuster for Deandre Jordan. Clippers don’t really have absorb room, suns and Mavs do. Mavericks don’t really have contracts to send back either.

Could just be something like Gortat+2nd rounder for Dallas or Phoenix absorbing him. Handing away another free asset to save money.

Gortat and 44 for Kleber and 33.

Kleber is just a body, but his contract has to be guaranteed by July 15. He's cheap depth but Dallas is about $13.5 million under the salary cap (league year ends on June 30). All they have to do is send back a cheap contract to get it done. Wizards get under the tax (avoiding the repeater tax) and have full use of the MLE this offseason.

It's shaky. There's a realistic argument for it from Dallas' viewpoint, but is still closer to unlikely than likely.

I don't think it's going to be nearly so cheap to get out from under the luxury tax. People look at that Nets/Hornets trade as though it was the Hornets doing the Nets a favor. In reality, I suspect it was a bit of the other way around. Yes, the Nets save a lot of money in 2019, but what the Hornets get out of it is Dwight Howard himself and the luxury tax. Basically, the price of saving a little money to get out of the luxury tax range for the coming season for the Hornets was swapping Dwight for Mozgov. That's a rather steep price. And yes, they could have stretched Dwight, but they're still trying to win because they're the Hornets and it's what they do for better or worse, so they would just go out and sign another C in free agency at that point, and signing a C in free agency for more than scraps is a terrible idea and would entirely defeat the purposes of stretching Dwight in the first place and isn't necessarily a better idea than just taking on Mozgov.

I_Like_Dirt wrote:I don't think it's going to be nearly so cheap to get out from under the luxury tax. People look at that Nets/Hornets trade as though it was the Hornets doing the Nets a favor. In reality, I suspect it was a bit of the other way around. Yes, the Nets save a lot of money in 2019, but what the Hornets get out of it is Dwight Howard himself and the luxury tax. Basically, the price of saving a little money to get out of the luxury tax range for the coming season for the Hornets was swapping Dwight for Mozgov. That's a rather steep price. And yes, they could have stretched Dwight, but they're still trying to win because they're the Hornets and it's what they do for better or worse, so they would just go out and sign another C in free agency at that point, and signing a C in free agency for more than scraps is a terrible idea and would entirely defeat the purposes of stretching Dwight in the first place and isn't necessarily a better idea than just taking on Mozgov.

The Hornets did do the Nets a favor. Nets now cleared room for 2 max contracts next season when I think they had room for 1. Nets paid the price (2 2nds) to do so.

Now in Summer of 2019, they have team options on LaVert, Allen, and Whitehead, Crabbes $18 million expiring, and RHJ/Russell as RFA. You factor the cap holds, salaries and Mozgov's salary they were up to $60 million with a projected cap of $108 million (renouncing Carroll, Lin). A guy like Butler would cost 30% of the cap, that's around $32.5 million. That eats away at at most of their $48 million in space. You take Mozgov's salary off, you're down to $43 million which gives them just enough to sign Irving and Butler at the full 30% (they could always take less to get more players around them), extend Jefferson and Russell, and probably Dinwiddie. That's a pretty stacked team.

Why is it a steep price to send Meeks somewhere+a future 2nd round pick? It’s not ideal, but that would get us out of the luxury tax. Plenty of options to send out a bigger one year deal and take back smaller one year deals with teams that have cap space.

It’s not like we’re asking teams to absorb Mahinmi’s full deal...

Think that all you want. I get why the Nets made the trade, absolutely. As much as I feel Dwight is still overrated, they got the better player and the shorter contract. The team that got out from the tax got 2 2nds for taking on Mozgov's contract. Think about that for a second. Getting out from under the tax is super expensive. The Raptors gave the Nets a 1st rounder to offload Carroll and the Wizards gave up a first to dump Nicholson last season and the league's financial situation is worse this season.

The Nets are largely winning most of these trades because they're getting other teams out of the tax. The only debatable exception is the Allen Crabbe trade, and there I feel that for whatever reason the Nets simply overestimate Crabbe more than anything, and they still got to dump Nicholson's contract in the process, dumping a big contract to a guy who isn't an NBA player for an even bigger one to a guy that is an NBA player. It turns out that teams are willing to pay a steep price to get out from under the tax, and there are only a few teams that can help them do it.

NatP4 wrote:Why is it a steep price to send Meeks somewhere+a future 2nd round pick? It’s not ideal, but that would get us out of the luxury tax. Plenty of options to send out a bigger one year deal and take back smaller one year deals with teams that have cap space.

It’s not like we’re asking teams to absorb Mahinmi’s full deal...

I’d hold onto Meeks. We don’t have to pay his salary for the first 15 or so games. Also, he has a pretty strong track record of being very productive offensively when healthy.

He looks healthy and his FTr last year was very encouraging. For his salary, we have a decent shot of him becoming a positive/neutral asset by the deadline.

Some contenders will need shooting and they’ll have TPE available.
Smith is the one I’d look to get out of.

Here’s an interesting one.
Gortat, Smith, 15 to the Suns for
Dudley, Bender, 31

We cut about 5M in salary, get a center prospect, and still get decent pick for depth.


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NatP4 wrote:Why is it a steep price to send Meeks somewhere+a future 2nd round pick? It’s not ideal, but that would get us out of the luxury tax. Plenty of options to send out a bigger one year deal and take back smaller one year deals with teams that have cap space.

It’s not like we’re asking teams to absorb Mahinmi’s full deal...

I'm thinking if there was an offer like that around, Ernie would have jumped at it. It isn't like he's gun-shy on trading 2nd rounders or anything and if a team were willing to absorb Meeks, the deal would be done by now. Beyond that, unless someone eats his salary entirely (and not many teams can do that who aren't also looking at free agency right now), the team is going to be taking back some salary in a trade, and is also likely going to be looking to replace him with a backup SG anyway.

I_Like_Dirt wrote:

NatP4 wrote:Why is it a steep price to send Meeks somewhere+a future 2nd round pick? It’s not ideal, but that would get us out of the luxury tax. Plenty of options to send out a bigger one year deal and take back smaller one year deals with teams that have cap space.

It’s not like we’re asking teams to absorb Mahinmi’s full deal...

I'm thinking if there was an offer like that around, Ernie would have jumped at it. It isn't like he's gun-shy on trading 2nd rounders or anything and if a team were willing to absorb Meeks, the deal would be done by now. Beyond that, unless someone eats his salary entirely (and not many teams can do that who aren't also looking at free agency right now), the team is going to be taking back some salary in a trade, and is also likely going to be looking to replace him with a backup SG anyway.

Agree with NatP4. I think Meeks can be moved. It might take a little while though. We are waiting for the market to be set for dumping salary. Right now, the teams with cap room have very high expectations on what they'll get in return, but I think those expectations will be tempered a bit over time and eventually they may be willing to make a trade with very little in return because it's better than letting cap room go to waste completely.

The big advantage of moving Meeks is that, as a small expiring contract, there are dozens of teams with either the cap room or the Trade Exception to absorb his salary, and we can pay them the cash to compensate. And as an added bonus, Meeks, up until last season, was actually a pretty good backup SG who can spread the floor for someone.

Most importantly, EG and Ted must project a message that they are perfectly willing to pay the luxtax if necessary. They don't want other teams to think they're going to make a trade out of desperation.

I think Meeks can be moved, too. Can he be moved with no salary coming back for 2nd rounders? We will see. There aren't a lot of teams that can outright absorb him and most of those teams are going to be looking at free agency anyway. At the very end of free agency, if everyone that is desperate to get out from under the tax are out from under it already, and there is still a tanking team with cap space left, then it's possible.

It's also worth noting that the projected 2018-19 lux tax for the NBA is about $123 million. Moving Meeks still doesn't get below the lux tax on its own. Without him, the Wizards are at just over $121 million. The 15th pick is slotted for $2.2714 million. And the team would have 10 players under contract and anyone else they added, even for the minimum, pushes them further into the tax. They'd still have to make another move, only they wouldn't be able to control what kind of move that would be until they found out if they could move Meeks, so unless they're willing to ride this out and wait into the season, I kind of expect something pretty drastic somewhere in the offseason - drastic and expensive. Maybe I'm wrong, but looking at the situation objectively, it's how I see it. That 15th pick salary is also why I kind of expect Ernie to move it - not because it's smart, but because it's an Ernie thing to do as a means of controlling salary without dumping vets.