RealGM

http://blogs.ajc.com/hawks/2010/05/19/a ... the-hawks/

This is some excellent, in-depth info that Cunningham has put together. Definitely worth reading.

From what it sounds like, the Hawks are in some trouble if they can't resign JJ. Essentially, our cap situation is very limited because of a number of cap holds and a lot of money tied up in 7-8 players (the 8th being our draft pick). It comes down to whether the ASG is willing to spend some cash and potentially go into the luxury tax. Anyway you look at it, Sund is going to have to work greater miracles this offseason than he did just to bring Crawford here to put a team together that can compete on the same level. I don't know enough about the cap to understand how cap holds work, but there must be a strategy behind why Sund allowed this team to be in this situation. Surely, you would think he would have thought about this offseason when making all his moves during the last offseason.

If anyone knows something about cap holds, I'd love to understand why the CBA has them and how they work. How exactly do they apply to the cap and when do they come off the cap? Also, are there any ways to work around them?

I don't know as much as some around here, but cap holds exist so that a team cannot use their cap space to sign up to the cap limit, and then use their bird rights to re-sign their own free agents. Cap holds continue until either the team renounces the player or the player signs with the team or another team.

In the case of renouncing or the player signing with another team the entire cap hold disappears, so from what Cunningham said I think the Hawks could gain a little more space by renouncing West, Smith (Joe) and Morris... like 2.5 million. The Hawks will not renounce Childress or JJ, so will not be a player early in free agency at all.

If Joe leaves, the Hawks cannot replace him with a max FA (they lack the space as Cunningham makes clear). That's why evildallas' non-JJ off-season plan (IIRC) has the Hawks signing a defensive stopper SG to replace Joe... that's pretty much all we could afford. Maybe we could use the MLE to sign a Mike Miller or Ray Allen... but I expect Allen to go for more and Miller may not be worth that much (depending on the length of the deal).

^^ so wait, if that happens and Hawks can trade Marvin and Teague for cap, then they will have enough to offer max to a free agent this summer?

So, regardless of what we do, there is going to be some overhauling of the roster this year. Things are going to come to a head with Childress at the very least. If they decide to bring him back home, we'll have a significant contract coming his way. If they renounce their rights to him, we might then have some playing room. That might be the first decision made this offseason.

Josh Childress by himself means nothing. The respective cap holds for Joe or Chill would push us over the cap. Renouncing one without the other does nothing. That means that as long as Joe is a possible signing we may as well hold on to Chill's rights in case they can be parlayed into something.

Trading Marvin and/or Teague for cap space doesn't help either unless we are renouncing everyone. If Johnson is going to be resigned, then we may have to trade Marvin ultimately, but doing so for just cap space commits us to a path. The reason I say we may have to trade Marvin is that he will never be able to justify he salary as the 5th option on offense unless he becomes a true defensive stopper (which I feel is unlikely as well).

Trying to keep it simple here, but should Joe decide to take another offer, we then should be able to put together a sign and trade at the minimum to allow Joe to walk and get something in return.
It does sound like we might be taking a step backwards, but if we have peaked with our current roster, we can't stand pat and continue to watch teams pass by us to the ECF.
I would think any team that signs Joe would rather do a sign/trade so they can remove cap space from their roster as well.
It would be fortunate if we could get a West Coast team to offer Joe. We perhaps might have a better pool of players to consider in a S&T?

Best case is Dallas if Joe wants to go to Mavs. We can get the non guaranteed contract of Dampier and more importantly push to include Beaubois. He's the best thing in the entire NBA we might get back for Johnson.