hugepatsfan wrote:For Stewart, he has to count as this year's salary averaged with his 4 year extension. That averages out to $13,053,343. So think of it as us needing to match that much salary on a trade. To get within the rules on that, we would need to cobble together $11,886,675 of salary.
Pritchard/Kornet/Brissett/Svi/Stevens combine for over $13M in salary. So that gets us there.
However, now there's three issues to account for on the Pistons side...
1) Even though Stewart counts as $13M+ of salary to us incoming, he still only counts at this year's salary ($5.2M) to them. So now they aren't sending out enough salary to match what we're sending back.
2) Pritchard has his own poison pill contract, so he counts not at the $4.0M of outgoing money he is to us, but $6.7M. In an dof itself, this gap isn't huge (like it is with Stewart's deal) so it's workable in most deals. But in this specific instance, it's a big challenge that compounds issue #1.
3) 5 for 1 deals are tough midseason because you need to open up the roster spots to execute the trade and most teams don't have 4 extra players they're ok cutting.
It's not impossible but it will be really, really challenging. Need to leverage a lot of open roster spots around the NBA.
The Blazers don't have any center on their roster outside of Ayton besides old friend Moses Brown who is on a non-guaranteed deal. Maybe if you throw them a 2nd round swap or something they'd waive Brown and take Kornet in via a minimum salary exception.
The Bulls have an open roster spot and not a lot of real "PF-sized" players on the roster. So maybe they'd be interested in taking Brissett for free. Also, if we're dealing Pritchard we're going to want a backup PG coming back. So maybe we can send them Pritchard and take Jevon Carter back into the Grant Williams TPE.
The Pistons could maybe release Kevin Knox to open up a roster spot to take 2 players back.
So in the end, the full deal would be...
POR gives: nothing
POR gets: C Luke Kornet, 2nd round swap
They pocket a swap of 2nds for trading backup centers after waiving Moses Brown to free up the roster spot.
CHI gives: G Jevon Carter
CHI gets: G Payton Pritchard, F Oshae Brissett, 2nd round pick(s)
They swap a backup PG for a younger one and pocket some 2nd round picks. They have the roster spot to take on an extra player.
DET gives: F/C Isaiah Stewart
DET gets: F Lamar Stevens, G/F Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk, draft pick compensation from BOS (at least a 1st and multiple 2nds, maybe another 1st?)
They cut Kevin Knox to open up the extra roster spot. They move Stewart for picks.
BOS gives: G Payton Pritchard, F Lamar Stevens, G/F Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk, C Luke Kornet, F Oshae Brissett, draft compensation
BOS gets: F/C Isaiah Stewart, G Jevon Carter (taken into TPE)
Since we're using the TPE on Carter, the math works here for a trade.
Nice work! Overall we get a roster upgrade, but there's a lot of players going out from the Celtics. With Celtics current record and coherency on the bench, it could disrupt the chemistry.
Nevertheless, I'd do that trade and not look back. Horford, Stewart, Hauser, Carter is a better bench 6-9, and there will be opening for an additional wing signing.
