Robot Rock wrote:I think your opening night starting lineup will be as follows:
C - Al Jefferson
PF - Marvin Williams
SF - Michael Kidd-Gilchrist
SG - Gerald Henderson
PG - Kemba Walker
Lance is not coming to Charlotte except to play road games and maybe score some of that sweet weed P.J. has. Because of this dumb signing of Williams, who is insurance against the inexperience of Zeller/Vonleh, I don't see us spending much more cash.
Remember, there should be some money saved over to resign Kemba next year.
We still have 13M in cap space left over right now, and the cap is going up significantly every year. Lebron opted for a two-year so that he can sign his last max contract in a couple years when the cap is much higher. If we locked up our core to contracts now, rather than try to continue build at a heftier price, we can afford to overpay a little now. Take a look at estimates for the cap in the next couple years: this year the cap is 63.2, next year it's expected to jump another 3-4M, and after the new TV deals are negotiated two years from now the cap could take an enormous jump
potentially to $80M!Locking up every member of the core to LONG-TERM extensions at now-reasonable prices makes perfect sense. Signing Al to a $16M contract, Lance to a $13M contract, Kemba to a $12M contract, Biz to $5M, MKG to $9M over the next few years puts us at the cap this year, well over the $66-67M cap next season (not luxtax but potentially close), but after that, there would still be flexibility to improve the team significantly.
Put this into perspective: signing a 4th year player like Lance to a max deal is under $16M right now (25% of the cap). In two years, if the cap makes that enormous jump, 25% of 80M is $20M. It will get a ton more costly to sign a high-end player in a few years. Lock up this current core to slightly inflated, but very long deals, and they will be bargains under the $80M cap.
This is all contingent on whether the TV deal does raise the cap that much. The league knows more than I do on the subject.
