RealGM

This is pretty simple, and hopefully it will be a fun discussion during the lockout. If there were to be an expansion draft, what 8 players from your roster would you protect?

The rules:
1. Unrestricted free agents are not available to an expansion team to draft.
2. Unsigned draft picks are not available for the expansion team to draft.
3. Restricted free agents are available.
4. Each team must have at least one player unprotected, so if team x had 8 players under contract and 4 that were UFAs, it could only protect 7 players.
5. The expansion team can only draft one player from each roster and must have at least 14 players.

Josh Smith
Horford
Teague
Jamal
Collins

........ everybody else can go

lol, id leave joe and marvin unprotected and hope they did us a favor

johnny878 wrote:lol, id leave joe and marvin unprotected and hope they did us a favor

Exactly. That's the strategy you use with an expansion team. We only have 9 players under contract, so the list isn't that hard.

Josh Smith
Al Horford
Jeff Teague
Zaza Pachulia
Kirk Hinrich
Magnum Rolle
Pape Sy
Keith Benson (not under contract, but restricted and I don't believe draftees are available in expansion)

If you want to add in the ending contracts from last year to make it a more difficult exercise you'd have:
Jason Collins
Damien Wilkins
Jamal Crawford
Hilton Armstrong
Etan Thomas
Josh Powell

It would depend on my future plans and Jason's plans as well as to whether I protect him or Damien. So you got Joe whom no expansion team would touch because in teams 5th season he'll be half the cap. Jamal who might get selected as sizable expiring contract. However, most likely is Marvin to get selected as well because even though he's overpaid for what he currently produces he's only on a 3 year deal and a team might risk that in a new scenario he might show the potential that got him selected in the lottery. The other key is that they realistically don't expect to compete in those first 3 years anyway. His salary would help meet their minimum requirements as they progress in their development and perhaps he'd be a valuable trade chip in year 3 as he's an 8M+ expiring deal that year.