GreatBuchinsky wrote:Been thinking about the trade deadline and next offseason since we will no longer be operating as a team with space.
Possible Free Agents
Hield
Toppin
Siakam
Smith
Johnson
Committed Salaries for 24-25 $100,289,455 (assuming Smith opts out)
Yes. Assuming Haliburton misses enough games that he wouldn't qualify for All-NBA and thus, only gets the 25% max, this would be accurate, I think.
Projected Cap - $142m
Projected Tax - $172.6m
Currently, yes. I'm still assuming that we'll see the cap/tax "smoothed" and end up with the 10% cap rise, so it could end up at $149.6m?
I assume ownership prefers not to pay the tax which will give us about $72.3m to work with (drops to $65m if Haliburton makes All-NBA which feels unlikely now). Siakam can probably be locked in for starting salary of $42.6m which leaves us at around $29.7m to fill up to 5 additional roster spots? I'd like to see Smith retained in the $9-12m range. That would leave room for another $15-17m player then a couple vet min guys. The trade deadline is going to be very telling on the longer term plan. If Buddy/Toppin aren't traded I assume one will be the beneficiary of a Bruce Brown 1+1 type of tradeable deal this offseason.
I could see Indy trying to trade up for a bit of an earlier 2nd round pick using our 3 projected late ones on the books already for this year, so you could see an absolute league minimum type deal for a player or two? A vet minimum or two, and yeah, you're looking at possibly a Bruce Brown type deal, or the Pacers could look at using their full non-taxpayer MLE worth of exception to sign a player or two? There's a lot up in the air, and kind of all depends on Haliburton's All-NBA candidacy (he can only miss 3 more games before he has to apply for an "extraordinary exception"), Siakam's re-signing (god, I hope so), and the results of next week's trade deadline?
But hey, this is a helluva debut post! Love the thought and machinations here. Welcome aboard!