Hawks can't acquire 2 max players...

[MaceCase]

LMAO!!!!!!! You provided 4 fansites that you yourself could have written for all we know as your evidence? Really??? SBNation?! Bleacher Report?!!!!!!!! Yahoo Contributor Network?!!!! Lawd!


Dude, there is no "dropping 20 million" for 2012. Even with Kirk expiring the team is still at 60 million (that's 2 million above the cap). OMG, how is that? Oh, gee how bout you **** look and see http://www.shamsports.com/content/pages ... /hawks.jsp
Notice that Harris replaced Marvin's deal and that we are actually paying him more this year than Marvin? Notice that even with Joe gone already the team is still over the cap in 2012?

And oh, Josh is an expiring anyway in 2013 so wtf does a "proactive" GM care about getting more expiring out of an expiring? You really suck at this, I mean absolutely terrible. I honestly feel DTown has a better grasp of the cap with his Zaza for Dwight trade idea than you do. I mean damn, let's go to the trade-board for all of our groundbreaking news and speculations

[dms269]

Calm down folks.

[Jamaaliver]

Yeah, Mace. I gotta admit. Your attitude and constant ridicule have pretty much drained any desire to even try to have an adult conversation with you.

1. You've made some good points. It's all been completely wrong, however.

2. Thusly, I disagree with everything you've said.

3. I stand by my original statement:

What really burns is that we could have traded Josh Smith this past season to NJ for the draft rights to Damion Lillard.

THAT kid is a star in the making. (And the likely ROY.)

That move alone would have given us a fresh start and some cap relief.

[tha best]

Jamaaliver, im gonna have to side with mace on this one. I'm not gonna call you names or nothing, but we saved a lot more money by trading joe. I'm no joe hater, I love the guy, but I love the hawks more. I rather have a chance at signing one or two of the marquee players instead of taking a chance on the unproven rookie, albeit he does look impressive. Joe, is in a better situation now, and even if we dont make the playoffs this year, we are too. I dont think it would've been smart to keep the older joe johnson, cause honestly, he wasnt taking us anywhere. I'm not saying josh will either, but we have a chance to put together a little super team together ourselves, that could get us to the promise land all cause we traded joe. Now, I ask you this, would you rather win a title in 5 years or see us still paying joe for less production because he is declining due to his age.

[tha best]

Jamaaliver, im gonna have to side with mace on this one. I'm not gonna call you names or nothing, but we saved a lot more money by trading joe. I'm no joe hater, I love the guy, but I love the hawks more. I rather have a chance at signing one or two of the marquee players instead of taking a chance on the unproven rookie, albeit he does look impressive. Joe, is in a better situation now, and even if we dont make the playoffs this year, we are too. I dont think it would've been smart to keep the older joe johnson, cause honestly, he wasnt taking us anywhere. I'm not saying josh will either, but we have a chance to put together a little super team together ourselves, that could get us to the promise land all cause we traded joe. Now, I ask you this, would you rather win a title in 5 years or see us still paying joe for less production because he is declining due to his age.

[Jamaaliver]

tha best, I appreciate your input.

The thing is....I never said we had to keep JJ. My whole point was that making this move (Josh for #6) was a good way to START revamping the team. If we stopped there, we'd have cap space to extnd Teague.

If we wished to continue the overhaul JJ, Horford, Teague and our TWO 1st round draft picks would have been great bargaining chips to acquire more talent. All players are merely assets to be moved. Noone is truly untouchable.

I am of the belief that JJ will only get more tradeable as his contract gets shorter. We heard for years that JJ's contract was immovable. Ferry moved him in his first week on the job.

There would have been other opportunities to move JJ. I have no doubt.

[azuresou1]

Then that's the crux of the issue - you're the ONLY one on this board who believes we'd be able to move Joe for anything.

JJ was moved because the Nets were desperate for any talent to retain their superstar, something that is not a common situation.

[phildm]

Longtime lurker here. I felt the need to chime in.

@Jamaaliver: These were your arguments:
-What really burns is that we could have traded Josh Smith this past season to NJ for the draft rights to Damion Lillard.
- That move alone would have given us a fresh start and some cap relief.

You then followed it up with a reply to mace:
1. You've made some good points. It's all been completely wrong, however.
2. Thusly, I disagree with everything you've said.
3. I stand by my original statement:

This leads me to believe that the berating you got made you just completely ignore his valid points:
1. Trading Josh Smith in February for a 2012 draft pick in June does not guarantee you draft rights to Damion Lillard. Trading Smith for a draft pick gives you an opportunity to potentially land Lillard, or not have it until the next year at all, depending on how the Nets protect the pick and on how the Nets play the rest of the year.

2. There is very little relief for trading Josh Smith. The link he provided shows you that with the status quo, our salary is at $60,921,972 on players. Now, eliminating Josh from that equation, you get $47.7M, or about $10M in cap space on five players.

This doesn't factor in people that are incoming from the Josh Smith trade, nor does it factor in the cap hold on the draft pick that we would have gotten. Mace explains it pretty well, giving you a cap space of about $3.8M to spend on four players. That's hardly anything to brag about. I'd rather have the "above average player" you're trying to ship out.

The aftermath to all this?

1. We still have Joe Johnson's albatross contract. I agree with you that anything is possible, and I think Joe's contract might be movable in the last two years. Someone might dump some good players for the big cap relief, provided we haven't amnestied him yet.

2. We trade Josh Smith to New Jersey. Without Gerald Wallace eating into their cap space, and depending how crafty they were with the Smith trade to Atlanta, they might have room to pitch Howard to NJ. I'm not going to delve deeper into a "what if".

3. We have two first round picks. Ours might be mid teens, depending on how far we fall. New Jersey's could be anywhere; there's no telling how Josh impacts them on the standings. Mace again explains how a few losses could lead to a high lottery pick, which NJ would indubitably protect, or they can slide further down the list bc of the wins that Smith gives them. Granted, we can package these two first round picks to get Lillard, but again that's going deeper into the rabbit hole.

[Jamaaliver]

Fair points all, Phil.

I generally don't go into too much details with these types of plans as they are all just conjecture. I'll elaborate on my intentions/thought process.

The entire point of this thread is that to have a legitimate shot at two truly max players, we'd have to dump either Josh or Horford.

1. The comment I made regarding Josh to NJ for their lottery pick was contingent on it being a true salary dump. Josh traded for what becomes the #6 pick and, say, Kris Humphries OR Brook Lopez's expiring contract. Other minor contracts would probably be needed to match up the numbers.

2. The lottery pick would probably have been top3 protected (though I believe with the production Josh was putting up, we could have talked them into making it only #1 protected). It couldn't have been worse than the #10 pick and thus still would have been an attractive asset.
The original target i had in mind for the pick was Andre Drummond. Or perhaps Austin Rivers. Damion Lillard being there at #6 was just icing on the cake.

3. Kirk Hinrich's $8 million salary was already coming off the books at season's end. Getting rid of Josh's $12 million salary on top of that drops a total $20 million of the books. When you factor in that Green, McGrady, Pargo, Stackhouse, Ivan, Dampier, Jason Collins & Vlad Rad were all set to leave the team also: that's $27million coming off the books after last season. We already know that Marvin was easily traded for a deal that was 2 years shorter.
So by trading Josh and letting those other players walk away we immediately drop almost $28 million off the books.

We'd have roughly $14 million dollars in straight cap space, but would have to factor $3.8 million for the two draft picks. That leaves us with 7 players under contract for next season at $48 million dollars.

We still have $10 million in capp space to fill the roster PLUS the mid level exception of $5million which CAN be broken up and offered to multiple veterans.

And this is WORSE case if we were unable to move JJ immediately.

[Jamaaliver]

That's $15 million left to fill out 5-8 roster spots.

NOTE: Green, McGrady, Pargo, Stackhouse, Ivan, Dampier, Jason Collins & Vlad Rad all combined last season for less than $6 million in salaries.

If we signed another 5 vets at the veterans minimum (just like last year) using the MLE, that leaves us with $10 million in capspace for future deals...

[phildm]

1. The comment I made regarding Josh to NJ for their lottery pick was contingent on it being a true salary dump. Josh traded for what becomes the #6 pick and, say, Kris Humphries OR Brook Lopez's expiring contract. Other minor contracts would probably be needed to match up the numbers.

2. The lottery pick would probably have been top3 protected (though I believe with the production Josh was putting up, we could have talked them into making it only #1 protected). It couldn't have been worse than the #10 pick and thus still would have been an attractive asset.
The original target i had in mind for the pick was Andre Drummond. Or perhaps Austin Rivers. Damion Lillard being there at #6 was just icing on the cake.

3. Kirk Hinrich's $8 million salary was already coming off the books at season's end. Getting rid of Josh's $12 million salary on top of that drops a total $20 million of the books. When you factor in that Green, McGrady, Pargo, Stackhouse, Ivan, Dampier, Jason Collins & Vlad Rad were all set to leave the team also: that's $27million coming off the books after last season. We already know that Marvin was easily traded for a deal that was 2 years shorter.
So by trading Josh and letting those other players walk away we immediately drop almost $28 million off the books.

We'd have roughly $14 million dollars in straight cap space, but would have to factor $3.8 million for the two draft picks. That leaves us with 7 players under contract for next season at $48 million dollars.

We still have $10 million in capp space to fill the roster PLUS the mid level exception of $5million which CAN be broken up and offered to multiple veterans.

And this is WORSE case if we were unable to move JJ immediately.

1. The Gerald Wallace trade was for Mehmet Okur + Shawne Williams + Conditional FIrst. Mehmet was expiring, but Shawne Williams had a 3.135M player option, which he would easily exercise. If you're going to argue that we "could have had the #6" you would have to start at that same trade.

2. No comment. Agree to disagree. I'd rather have Josh than anyone outside Anthony Davis in this draft.

3. Your numbers are waaaaaay off. Sure, Hinrich and Smith would leave the roster, but you would be subtracting from a number that had us paying the LUXURY TAX. Not to mention, almost every player we kept had a substantial raise.

Joe Johnson: 19.75M
Al Horford: 12.00M
Marvin Williams: 8.29M
Zaza Pachulia: 5.25M
Jeff Teague: 2.43M
Ivan Johnson: 0.96M
Shawne Williams: 3.14M
TOTAL: 51.82M

This is not counting the two draft picks we'd have, which would probably be in the lottery. I'll use your number for your cap hold. That takes us to 51.82M + 3.80M = 55.62.

The NBA salary cap for 2012 was set at 58.04M. Also, the mid-level exception for teams below the cap is $2.575M. That doesn't give us much leeway.

[phildm]

OMG It posted it four times. Mods, feel free to kill the duplicates if you want.