The Path to Max Cap Space Next Offseason (2022)

[hugepatsfan]

I'm an accounting nerd so I love getting my Mike Zarren on. Figured I would do a breakdown of the simplest path to creating a maximum salary slot next year. I am going to do the base scenario off of signing Bradley Beal since that is the presumed target...

The salary cap next year is now projected to be $119M. That means Beal's max would be $41,650,000 (35% of the cap). So we start the calculations knowing that we need to leave that much room for him.

Tatum and Brown are signed for a combined $59,092,851 so add that in. That brings us up to $100,742,851. Let's also add in the dead money on Demetrius Jackson ($92,857) to bring it up to $100,835,708.

Pritchard and Nesmith have team options for $2,239,200 and $3,804,360 that we'll have to decide on this year. Those are easy yes calls as either guy would be movable if we needed next year. So that brings the total up to $106,879,268.

Carsen Edwards will obviously have his option declined. Romeo has one for $5.6M and Grant has one for $4.3M. We need to decide on those before this upcoming season. We don't get to see if they develop this year to the where they'd be trade assets on those deals. Based on what each player has been so far, if the goal is flexibility, you simply cannot guarantee those numbers. Unless they improve they will be negative value on those deals and with the math already so tight we can't commit to needing to move that So let's leave those guys out.

The other guy is Al Horford. He is due $14.5M on his buyout. We could then stretch it over 3 years at $4,833,333 each season. So if we do that, it brings our cap up to $111,712,601.

If we keep our 1st rounder, there will also be a cap hold for that. I am going to assume we draft a stash guy or trade out for a future pick so we don't add that cap hold on to our calculatons though.

At that point we'd have 5 players under contract (Pritchard, Beal, Brown, Nesmith, Tatum). The last factor to consider though are incomplete roster charges. You have to account for one of those (same as the rookie minimum) to get up to the minimum of 12 players. So since we only have 5 players, we need to account for 7 of those roster holds. The rookie minimum for '22-23 is expected to be $953,000. So 7 of those are worth $6,671,000. That brings our total cap up to $118,383,601.

So there you have it, the math does check out. Based on current projects, we will have under a million to spare with a max deal for Bradley Beal next year if we do the following:

1) decline options on Grant/Romeo
2) avoid committing any salary beyond this year (that includes bringing Yam Mader over on a multi year deal)
3) remove our 1st round pick next year off our books by stashing him or trading into a future year
4) waive and stretch Horford's buyout next year
5) renounce bird rights on Smart, Timelord and all of our other free agent cap holds

At that point, we'd have the room exception (less than the tax payers MLE) and vet minimum deals to fill the last 7 spots of the roster.

Now let's work with potential variations of this...

Just for informational purposes, Smart's cap hold is $21.6M and Timelord's is $11.0M. You would need to leave that much cap space open for those cap holds to keep Bird Rights. Smart's would obviously be improabable to do while adding Beal. I did the math on Timelord and even dumping Horford so you don't have dead money and Nesmith and Pritchard leaves you a little short on a max for Beal if you keep Timelord's cap hold. Only short by about $1M so maybe you get him to take that much less but that's kind of greedy if he's already turning down money.

I left Al Horford on this list and assumed we stretched him ourselves. The obvious move to increase your flexibility after the Beal signing would be to find a taker for him. I already left off our 2022 1st rounder with the stipulation that we'd draft a stash guy or trade for a future pick. You could very well use it to dump Horford instead. At that point you remove his $4,833,333 cap hold to sign one more player after Beal. And remember, signing one more player also removes one of those $953,000 cap holds so that $4,833,333 to spend is really $5,786,333 (and add in any of the leftover cap space too if you really want to get down to the dollar).

Another guy I left off is Yam Mader. He's a tricky situation in these scenarios. If he signs this year it's likely a deal that will force us to salary dump Pritchard or Nesmith next year. If he comes over next year, unless he's signing for the minimum, he'd require part of the room exception. So that could be a very tricky situation to work out. It likely comes down to him or Pritchard if we go the cap space route.

The other point to make is that this was all done with Beal who is a 10 year vet. That entitles him to 35% of the cap on his max deal. Looking through the free agent lists, I don't see anyone in the 6-9 year experience bucket who would be worth a max deal, but if there was he would only get 30% of the cap.

If you sign a player with under 6 years of experience, his max would be 25%. The most obvious candidates here would be ayone in the RFA class a team would be willing to let go. John Collins seems to be having a tough negotiation in ATL so maybe he plays out the tender and tries unrestricted FA next year? IDK, seems unlikely.

[Matt5]

Thanks for the explanation. So we renounce Smart and Williams and stretch Horford in this scenario?

[lon3lytoaster]

Appreciate the detail put into this, especially with looking at new projections for the cap and dead salary of Jackson and Yabusele.

I knew the above was basically the case but damn it sobering to read through each piece that needs to fit together perfectly to make that work. I’d say this is borderline unrealistic to fetch Beal and field a team that can compete.

I think it’s important to consider, that yes we do want to make Tatum happy, his buddy is not necessarily on the same timeline as him and Jaylen.

Even filling the roster with vet min guys, I imagine it to be a two year process to really patch up the holes we’d have to put out a real contender.

Good to know Beal is technically attainable but can’t help but feel like we are in very bad shape right for the next couple of years cap and salary wise.

[darrendaye]

I'd agree with the plan, but will definitely gripe if they let Smart and Timelord walk without getting anything back.

[Spin Move]

I'd agree with the plan, but will definitely gripe if they let Smart and Timelord walk without getting anything back.

It might be possible to re-sign timelord and like 5 million per (Less then his cap hold) Smart just is not going to work, I dont know if you can trade him at the deadline without pissing off Tatum and Brown though,

[lon3lytoaster]

I'd agree with the plan, but will definitely gripe if they let Smart and Timelord walk without getting anything back.

I think they only play would be to deal them for 2023 FRPs at the deadline and renounce any TPE generated/salary acquired by upcoming free agent. Sounds risky if Beal decides to do literally anything else.

[robbie84]

Is it possible to do a sign and trade with the Wizards for Beal after he's signed an extension? We'd be able to use Horford and some other salaries and perhaps creating another trade exception (eg if we had to include Smart and R Williams etc).
Thanks for detailed effort on this.

[Ed Pinkney]

The idea of signing Beal next off season sounds great in theory but personally, I don't think the "three max players with minimal flexibility to add anything else" method works anymore unless one of the three is a LeBron/Durant/Giannis type, and even then everything needs to go pretty much perfectly.

Deep playoff runs (Conference Finals and Finals), you need at least 7 guaranteed reliable players. Is Tatum, Brown and Beal on a team that has not traditionally been a big free agent draw card going to attract ring chasers who take less money than they can get with other teams to sign with the Celtics (like they do with the LA teams, New York teams, Miami etc)? I just don't see it.

I think Tatum is their clear number one player (and he should be). It seems more realistic that the Celtics need to decide who the best number two player (or possibly another number one type player) would be to put with Tatum and then surround them with as many high end complimentary pieces/role players as possible. If it is not Brown, then they need to use him to get that other player.

Just my 2 cents, maybe they manage to pull it off and it works. I just feel like that seems really unlikely.

[zoyathedestroya]

Always felt this max cap space for a star was always going to be tricky to navigate.

I think the likelier scenario is acquiring Beal via S&T (but that would require him choosing us and only us the way some of these stars are doing now AND Wizards cooperating). Operating above the cap gives the Cs more flexibility to fill roster and keep some of the current guys even if they end up hard-capped.

[timpiker]

So in other words, there is no way of having another title in the foreseeable.

[lon3lytoaster]

Always felt this max cap space for a star was always going to be tricky to navigate.

I think the likelier scenario is acquiring Beal via S&T (but that would require him choosing us and only us the way some of these stars are doing now AND Wizards cooperating). Operating above the cap gives the Cs more flexibility to fill roster and keep some of the current guys even if they end up hard-capped.

You still don’t have a ton to trade back for him, unfortunately. Double S&T with Smart going back may help and may let you keep Timelord (not sure on that one; though. Haven’t seen the numbers for that scenario.) Marcus would have to want to go to Washington, too though which seems improbable unless it was for a pretty significant overpay.

[hugepatsfan]

If we acquire Beal via S&T, to match that maximum salary we'd have to send out $33,240,000.

Everyone say to "leverage" WAS into having to take Horford, but he only makes $26.5M if he's not bought out. So we still need to come up with another $6,740,000 of money. Remember, in order to have the threat of cap room to try and leverage WAS, we have to have already declined the options on Romeo/Grant. So they're not in play. Nesmith and Pritchard would be the only non Brown/Tatum players signed at this point so unless WAS wanted to pay RWIII or Smart we'd have to include both of them. We'd also need to pick up Edwards' option next year to get the final push because Pritchard and Nesmith together would be just short of what we need to add to Horford ($6,740,000 needed vs $6,043,560 for Nesmith & Pritchard).

So if we do S&T for Beal the deal is likely Horford/Nesmith/Pritchard/future picks.

This would literally gut the roster to just Tatum/Brown/Beal but we'd still have the cap holds on RWIII and Smart. We would be hard capped at the tax apron which currently projects to be about $147.2M. So that's how much in total we could spend around Tatum/Brown/Beal. Those 3 would make a combined $100.7M so in this scenario we'd have about $40M to fill out the other 13 spots on the roster.

If Smart signed for $20M/year he's likely starting the deal around $18M. Not sure what Rob gets but let's just his $11M cap hold as a placeholder. That gives you a great starting 5 but just $11M to spend on the last 10 roster spots. You won't even be able to do a full squad of vet min's. You'll need to sign multiple rookies to roster spots.

In the end, I just don't think retaining Smart and adding Beal will be doable whether by cap space or by S&T. So I think it's prudent to move him now.

[zoyathedestroya]

Heat acquired Lowry without threat of max cap space. Same goes for DeRozan. I believe KD and Butler as well. Not sure about Lonzo.

So it's more like, " get whatever crap you can from Boston or I walk for nothing, period." This may have happened to us with Hayward but Ainge called Indy's bluff before MJ swooped in. Who knows what really happened there.

[Slax]

Appreciate the analysis, it's similar to what I came up with on parquettalk.

Everyone say to "leverage" WAS into having to take Horford, but he only makes $26.5M if he's not bought out. So we still need to come up with another $6,740,000 of money. Remember, in order to have the threat of cap room to try and leverage WAS, we have to have already declined the options on Romeo/Grant. So they're not in play. Nesmith and Pritchard would be the only non Brown/Tatum players signed at this point so unless WAS wanted to pay RWIII or Smart we'd have to include both of them. We'd also need to pick up Edwards' option next year to get the final push because Pritchard and Nesmith together would be just short of what we need to add to Horford ($6,740,000 needed vs $6,043,560 for Nesmith & Pritchard).

So if we do S&T for Beal the deal is likely Horford/Nesmith/Pritchard/future picks.

I think this is an overly strict way of thinking about this - like this is a math puzzle where the rules are "Beal has to earn exactly $41.65M, and we have to go into the offseason with exactly the amount of cap space we need to sign him". But it will probably cost at most a second round pick or two to get rid of a one-year $5M-ish contract like Romeo or Grant, and when it comes to Carsen Edwards (or imo, preferably a two-year vet minimum guy we sign this offseason so we don't need to keep Carsen who has shown absolutely zero capacity for playing in the NBA), a few hundred thousand dollars difference in the base year of a contract probably wouldn't stop Beal from at least threatening to sign with us and thus force the Wizards to play ball, any more than the fact that we can only offer 5% raises instead of 8% raises would prevent him from coming here. So you can exercise an option on Romeo for salary matching purposes, and at that point all you need to send out is Horford + Romeo + any one of vet min guy or Carsen Edwards or Payton Pritchard or Yam Madar, plus picks.

From a negotiation standpoint, all you need is to make sure you can get enough cap space to sign Beal outright by giving up less to dump players than you would otherwise have to give up in the S&T you think the Wizards would be amenable to if they knew Beal was about to leave outright for nothing anyway. If all it takes to free a max cap slot is a couple second round picks, the Wizards will be happy to take back expiring contracts and a couple firsts in exchange for helping us get over the cap.

We would be hard capped at the tax apron which currently projects to be about $147.2M.

This seems off to me. Projected luxury tax threshold for 2022-23 was reported to be about $145M. The apron is $6M above the luxury tax threshold, adjusted by half the percentage increase in the cap since the CBA was signed, so we should be talking a bit over $151M. If we're starting with just $100.8M for Tatum, Brown, and Beal, that should leave us over $50M to keep Pritchard and Nesmith for $6M, re-sign Smart at $18M, and sign a draft pick for say $1.7M, and then have over $24M left to spend on the five roster slots that have incomplete roster charges, which means we could probably re-sign Rob and maybe even have a LITTLE give left to spend part of the MLE. Correct me if my math is wrong on any of these, but I think this is correct.

Anyway if my math is right, that leaves us with Smart, Beal, Brown, Tatum, Rob, Nesmith, Pritch, partial MLE, and some vet min guys. Is it a deep team? Well... no, the bench is probably pretty awful and Rob is a huge injury risk. But it's kind of typical of the "first year of assembled star lineup" that teams go through. Brooklyn, Lakers, Clippers, etc all went through this and then added guys later. Talent has a way of finding other talent in the modern NBA.

One more thing - in the past, Chris Paul opted into his player option with the understanding that he would be traded to the Rockets, so as to avoid forcing them to dip into the cap. Beal COULD do the same to make it easier for us to get him without being hard capped, and then we could extend him at the 35% of cap max for the following year. I expect that this WON'T happen, because Beal would have to give up four million and I don't think he would do that if he can get here anyway, nor do I think it's fair to expect him to. But it's a thing that has happened in the past so is not inconceivable, and if he's more interested in winning than money then that could give us an opportunity to REALLY pack on some salary by using the full extent of exceptions and re-signing guys. Probably not a HUGE advantage, but you know, maybe you get to keep a Josh Richardson or whatever and that could be worth something.

[Johnny Tomala]

Beal will sing supermax with Wizards. Stop dreaming about him.

[Hal14]

So the plan is to clear cap space to sign a max contract free agent in 2022. We all assume it will be Beal, but if he doesn't sign here, IMO we should be targeting Zion.

I highly doubt Zion resigns with New Orleans. There's already been rumors that he doesn't want to stay there long term. They were bad last yr and this next season they'll be even worse now that they don't have a PG with Ball gone.

Think about it. We sign Zion next summer to a max contract. Next summer we'd have Tatum (age 24), Brown (age 25) and Zion (age 22). You get the 3 of them locked up, keep them together for the next 7 yrs. You don't think we could win at least 1 ring during that time frame?

Zion fits the timeline better with the Jays, and he also fits better positionally, since he plays the 4 which allows you to slide Tatum down to the 3 and Brown at the 2. Think about how much bigger a lineup we have (and how much better rebounding) we'd have with Brown at the 2, Tatum at the 3, Zion at the 4 compared to Beal at the 2, Brown at the 3 and Tatum at the 4.

I get it that Beal and Tatum are boys, but if we end up signing Zion next summer instead, I won't hate it.

[Slax]

So the plan is to clear cap space to sign a max contract free agent in 2022. We all assume it will be Beal, but if he doesn't sign here, IMO we should be targeting Zion.

I highly doubt Zion resigns with New Orleans. There's already been rumors that he doesn't want to stay there long term. They were bad last yr and this next season they'll be even worse now that they don't have a PG with Ball gone.

Think about it. We sign Zion next summer to a max contract. Next summer we'd have Tatum (age 24), Brown (age 25) and Zion (age 22). You get the 3 of them locked up, keep them together for the next 7 yrs. You don't think we could win at least 1 ring during that time frame?

Zion fits the timeline better with the Jays, and he also fits better positionally, since he plays the 4 which allows you to slide Tatum down to the 3 and Brown at the 2. Think about how much bigger a lineup we have (and how much better rebounding) we'd have with Brown at the 2, Tatum at the 3, Zion at the 4 compared to Beal at the 2, Brown at the 3 and Tatum at the 4.

I get it that Beal and Tatum are boys, but if we end up signing Zion next summer instead, I won't hate it.

I don't think Zion is up for free agency until 2023, and he would be an RFA so we would need to give something up to get him in a S&T instead of losing him to a salary match. And even if he wants to come here, I don't think we're going to have enough assets to get him without giving up Tatum.

[grindtime22]

One more thing - in the past, Chris Paul opted into his player option with the understanding that he would be traded to the Rockets, so as to avoid forcing them to dip into the cap. Beal COULD do the same to make it easier for us to get him without being hard capped, and then we could extend him at the 35% of cap max for the following year. I expect that this WON'T happen, because Beal would have to give up four million and I don't think he would do that if he can get here anyway, nor do I think it's fair to expect him to. But it's a thing that has happened in the past so is not inconceivable, and if he's more interested in winning than money then that could give us an opportunity to REALLY pack on some salary by using the full extent of exceptions and re-signing guys. Probably not a HUGE advantage, but you know, maybe you get to keep a Josh Richardson or whatever and that could be worth something.

I think this is more likely than people think. I honestly think it is just as likely as a sign and trade (if he actually wants the Celtics). He gives up 4 million the first year, but then he gets the full supermax the following year starting at 35% with 5 years and 8% raises.

Its kind of an off the radar option, but he ends up with more money in the end if he is willing to wait a year. Who knows what he is thinking, but you can be a little bit riskier when you already have 175+ million locked down. He already went off the radar once with that 1+1 extension.

[Slax]

Beal will sing supermax with Wizards. Stop dreaming about him.

I wouldn't be surprised if Beal stays on the Wizards, but the "supermax" doesn't even exist for ten-year veterans because anyone is allowed to offer them a 35% salary. The only financial advantages the Wizards can offer that we can't are 8% raises instead of 5% raises and a five-year deal instead of a four-year deal. Frankly the raises aren't going to matter to Beal, less than $10M for someone who will make hundreds of millions in his career. The extra year is also only a small advantage, if not worthless; for an elite player in his late 20's, it might even be beneficial to do a four year deal with player option so he can negotiate another long-term contract after three years in his early 30's, compared to sticking out a five year deal that would take him into his mid 30's.

[Hal14]

So the plan is to clear cap space to sign a max contract free agent in 2022. We all assume it will be Beal, but if he doesn't sign here, IMO we should be targeting Zion.

I highly doubt Zion resigns with New Orleans. There's already been rumors that he doesn't want to stay there long term. They were bad last yr and this next season they'll be even worse now that they don't have a PG with Ball gone.

Think about it. We sign Zion next summer to a max contract. Next summer we'd have Tatum (age 24), Brown (age 25) and Zion (age 22). You get the 3 of them locked up, keep them together for the next 7 yrs. You don't think we could win at least 1 ring during that time frame?

Zion fits the timeline better with the Jays, and he also fits better positionally, since he plays the 4 which allows you to slide Tatum down to the 3 and Brown at the 2. Think about how much bigger a lineup we have (and how much better rebounding) we'd have with Brown at the 2, Tatum at the 3, Zion at the 4 compared to Beal at the 2, Brown at the 3 and Tatum at the 4.

I get it that Beal and Tatum are boys, but if we end up signing Zion next summer instead, I won't hate it.

I don't think Zion is up for free agency until 2023, and he would be an RFA so we would need to give something up to get him in a S&T instead of losing him to a salary match. And even if he wants to come here, I don't think we're going to have enough assets to get him without giving up Tatum.

Oh ok, yeah I just saw him on this list of 2022 free agents and got excited, lol

https://www.spotrac.com/nba/free-agents/2022/

But I guess it looks like Zion is only listed on that page cause he has a club option for the 2022-2023 season so if the team declines to exercise that option he's a free agent. Obviously the team would exercise that option...but maybe they won't if they have another bad season and Zion tells them he wants out?

https://www.spotrac.com/nba/new-orleans-pelicans/zion-williamson-31558/