Worm Guts wrote:DaKidKG wrote:KGdaBom wrote:Is there anybody still out there that you believe would be worth stretching Aldrich to get? I still don't understand stretching honestly. You get to defer their salary and stretch it over 5 years or something like that? Do you get to keep the player when you stretch him? Does he eventually come back to his original shape like Gumby or Stretch Armstrong?
At this point, it's probably pointless to stretch Aldrich. The point I was trying to make is that we could have gotten both Miles and Crawford if we would have paid Gibson $1-$2 million less per year, and stretched Aldrich's contract.
Yes the salary gets prorated over multiple years, so the Aldrich contract would only amount to about $2m this year.
 
It depends on if we have any cap space left.  Even 1 or 2 million  could be a relatively big difference in terms of getting someone we want versus whoever will take our minimum salary offer.
 
It's the total guaranteed salary divided by twice the number of years, plus 1.  So Cole would be ($7.3 + 2.0)/(2 x 2) + 1 = $1.86 mil/year, for five years, less anything he'd be willing to give up in a lower buy out, to quickly get on another team.  If we haven't signed Crawford with the room exception, we'd be going back under the cap, and getting cap space to the tune of $7.3 - $1.86 = $5.44.
Is there anyone left in free agency worth that?  Good question.  We are talking about marginally better players, that would play for MIN for a deal greater than the vet min, that wouldn't have come if we couldn't offer more if we offered cap space.  Keep in mind that while vet min deals only cost us $0.86 mil, the NBA front office kicks in their own money to add to the contract based on the years of service in the NBA.  So our offer of $2 mil in cap space for a vet could actually be less than someone else's vet min deal.  But for younger free agents, or one big one, it might give us a bigger advantage to get one more rotation piece.
Finally, I would lean towards keeping Aldridge and trying to find vet min players, rather than stretching him (and having $2 mil cap holds for 5 years) or using the OKC pick to turn him into cap space.  If we hold onto him until February, his contract could be useful to a team that wants to clear cap space for 2018.  For example, by that time, PHX' expectations may have declined, and they might trade us Cole for Dudley to help our playoff run.