FAH1223 wrote:closg00 wrote:Right now I am thankful that Beal turned-down our early extension offer, I am certain it was very generous knowing Ernie. I hope Ernie let's Beal walk like Larry Hughes rather than pay him even half a Max players yearly salary.
Or he'll play under the Qualifying Offer.
That would actually be a fantastic alternative, and one that seems plausible for all parties.
As it stands now, Beal can get no better than a 4-year offer from somewhere starting at $20.4M with 4.5% raises (assuming we match a max offer from another team rather than initiate our own offer with 7.5% raises). That's a total of $87M by the year 2020. But let's just assume that nobody offers the max and the best offer on the table starts at roughly $16M. That would total just $68M by the year 2020.
Beal's alternative option would be to take the $7.4M qualifying offer and then hit the free agency market in 2017 when the cap is even higher and even more teams have cap room.
From Beal's perspective, playing for the qualifying offer (and playing well), would mean that he gets paid $7.4M next year. A max deal in 2017 starts at roughly $24.5M If he signs a max deal, he would have totaled $83.9M by 2020, which is just barely less than he would have made if he signed a max deal in 2016, and considerably more than he would have made if he signed anything less than a max deal in 2016.
The other big benefit is that if he takes the qualifying offer, our cap hit would be a paltry $7.4M, giving us cap room for Durant plus another $15M to spare for depth. The timing on this could be difficult, though. Presumably, Beal will spend the first few weeks of free agency seeking a max offer from someplace before opting for the qualifying offer. By the time he arrives at his decision, most of the other good free agents might be locked up. (The Durant bidding wouldn't be affected by this. We could go after Durant assuming Beal's larger $14M cap hold before Beal ever makes his decision.)
FWIW, if Beal takes the qualifying offer, we would still have Bird Rights on him in 2017. We just wouldn't have RFA rights on him and therefore couldn't force him to stay merely by matching other offers.