nate33 wrote:Rand McNally wrote:nate33 wrote:If you allow for the $74M in savings on Middleton and Kispert, then we are paying $37M to move up from #6 to #3. I think that is probably the going rate for moving up high in the lottery.
My guess is the very most Beal would accept in a buyout is the NTMLE, assuming a team like the Clippers would give it to him for 2 years.
You have to factor in the opportunity cost of having dead (thus untradeable) money on the books for the next two seasons.
Further, you have to game out the rest of PHX's offseason to the best of your ability to assess the risk around them making the playoffs next year. While the chances of them jumping the Wizards in next year's lottery are unlikely today, the Wizards pick swap with PHX next year gives WAS a backstop against a specific type of lottery disaster.
If you're paying considerably to move from 6 to 3 -- whatever form that payment takes -- you need to be really convinced about who are you are taking at 3. It's not that it can't work, but further patience might be the more prudent course.
Ones' assessment of PG also matters here. If he's completely cooked, then maybe he's a trojan horse that helps enhance the PHX draft equity WAS hold. Or maybe he's an asset you can rehab and move to someone who strikes out in free agency.
The negotiation surrounding Beal's buyout would be interesting. The NBA has a "right to set-off" provision whereby when a player is waived while still under contract, his old team gets repaid whatever amount the player earns on his new contract if he joins another team. So, for example, if Beal ends up signing with the Lakers for the taxpayer MLE, the Wizards would get back that taxpayer MLE of $5.5M a year (for 2 years presumably).
Any new team signing him would have no motivation to pay Beal more than the vet minimum, because, either way, Beal is getting all the money he is owed, so they figure most of that money should come out of Leonsis' pocket and not theirs. So if we just waived him, we would only get back about $4M (2 times the vet-minimum salary of $2M).
The solution here is to negotiate with Beal. Tell him we're not going to waive him, nor play him at all and condemn him to being under contract and missing out on 2 seasons of his career, unless he works with us to find a new destination with a team willing to pay him a reasonable salary commensurate with his ability. I think there are teams out there who would pay him something close to MLE salary for 2 years. If they work that out, then we can shave roughly $30M off of Beal's salary in a buyout.
If we save $30M in Beal's buyout, then the end result is that we paid just $7M to move up from #6 to #3!
Beal's NTC will allow him to control his final destination. There's no way he approves a trade to the Wizards and then they say "oh by the way, we're cutting you." It would all have to be pre-orchestrated.
