2020 Free Agency

[d-train]

I still haven't heard if that number for Nurkic is correct or not. He only makes that 14.1 mil number if he hits an incentive bonus. I don't know what that bonus is or how likely he is to actually hit it. If he doesn't, that brings his number down to 12.8 mil, not 14.1.

Good question, could be hard to hit an incentive while injured and not playing.

[d-train]

the obligatory "2019 off-season isn't dome yet" out of the way....

last I saw the projected cap was going to be about 116M

Damian Lillard $31,626,953
CJ McCollum $29,354,152
Jusuf Nurkić $14,138,889
Zach Collins $5,406,255
Anfernee Simons $2,252,040
Gary Trent $1,663,861

Andrew Nicholson $2,844,429
Anderson Varejão $1,913,345

89.2M

now, you have to add 6 roster charges for being 6 players under the minimum. That will be about 5.5M raising the Blazers to about 94.7M. That would leave them only 21-22M in space

if they use their 2020 first to add a player, you delete a roster charge but add the rookie scale. Probably adding about 1.2M in salary dropping Blazer cap-space to the 20-21M range

and if Portland re-signs Hood to his early-Bird max of about 10M, their cap-space would be 10-11M with 8 players under contract. Hood's player option is 6M, so between his early-Bird max and PO there's a potential 4M in additional cap-space

That's 10M in cap-space with 6 players needed for a minimum roster, and this does not account for Whiteside, Bazemore, Hezonja, Tolliver, & Skal. Skal's QO would be 3.5M and Hezonja has a 1.98M player option.

Blazers will finally have some flexibility after 4 years of being strapped because of 2016. But it will be limited flexibility because they will have so few players under contract and only limited cap-space, if any at all.

Is that the right number for Nurk? Hoopshype has him at 12.8 in 2020, not 14.1. Did he hit some incentives that maybe they aren't taking into account?

Regardless, I believe we've reached a point in time where fans care more about these cold hard cap figures than actual GM's do. If there's one thing this summer proved, having cap space at the beginning of FA really doesn't matter. If you have a player to wants to play for you, teams always find ways to make room. We talk about these numbers as though they're set in stone when in reality, they're much more fluid than that. Maybe it costs some picks or renouncing a FA on the books, but if you need to make extra room, you can do it.

I also seriously question how seriously the NBA enforces the roster charges for teams under the minimum. When was the last time that ever figured into nullifying a potential roster move? Who knows, maybe they do. That may be a question without an answer, but there's no question the NBA absolutely LOVES the player empowerment era with guys moving around the league more than ever. It creates a nearly 12mo NBA news cycle which is great for the leagues bottom line. As we saw with tampering, there are certain rules that don't strictly enforce and the league is trying to address by either changing the rules or eliminating the rules. I just can't see the NBA telling a team "No you can't sign this star player because you have a couple too many empty roster spots".

Got off on a tangent there, point being, if in some bizarro world the AD in LA experiment goes horribly wrong and Dame is able to convince AD to play for the Blazers, I believe they'd find a way to make it work even if the black and white numbers at this time aren't there. There's always bad teams willing to advantage of a team needing to cut salary for a FA, it's like clockwork every year. If the Blazers were in a position to get AD, you can't tell me there wouldn't be 4-6 teams lined up and willing to absorb Collins and Trent's contracts to open up the space for his deal.

It just feels like more than ever before, there's a TON of "coloring outside the lines" being done with how teams approach their salary cap and I think we as fans tend to think it's a lot more rigid in terms of teams ability to make things work.

There is no ambiguity in the salary cap math that's done to approve or disapprove trades. The entire CBA and it's administration has some ambiguity and interpretation but not the salary cap math. It's complicated enough that it's easy to misinterpret what's going on. I think you are responding to its complexity. Additionally, there was many trades misreported that did not satisfy the CBA that might have made it seem like there was no CBA constraints.

[Fitz303]

the obligatory "2019 off-season isn't dome yet" out of the way....

last I saw the projected cap was going to be about 116M

Damian Lillard $31,626,953
CJ McCollum $29,354,152
Jusuf Nurkić $14,138,889
Zach Collins $5,406,255
Anfernee Simons $2,252,040
Gary Trent $1,663,861

Andrew Nicholson $2,844,429
Anderson Varejão $1,913,345

89.2M

now, you have to add 6 roster charges for being 6 players under the minimum. That will be about 5.5M raising the Blazers to about 94.7M. That would leave them only 21-22M in space

if they use their 2020 first to add a player, you delete a roster charge but add the rookie scale. Probably adding about 1.2M in salary dropping Blazer cap-space to the 20-21M range

and if Portland re-signs Hood to his early-Bird max of about 10M, their cap-space would be 10-11M with 8 players under contract. Hood's player option is 6M, so between his early-Bird max and PO there's a potential 4M in additional cap-space

That's 10M in cap-space with 6 players needed for a minimum roster, and this does not account for Whiteside, Bazemore, Hezonja, Tolliver, & Skal. Skal's QO would be 3.5M and Hezonja has a 1.98M player option.

Blazers will finally have some flexibility after 4 years of being strapped because of 2016. But it will be limited flexibility because they will have so few players under contract and only limited cap-space, if any at all.

Is that the right number for Nurk? Hoopshype has him at 12.8 in 2020, not 14.1. Did he hit some incentives that maybe they aren't taking into account?

I believe that is the correct cap number for the moment. However, his likely incentive for this year will almost undoubtedly be dropped back down to unlikely next year (As he would need to play in 70 games this next year to keep that incentive), and drop his salary back down to the initial $12,888,889 for the summer of 2020

[wjun15]

Any scenario where we can obtain Blake Griffin at the deadline without giving up our core?

I.e. trading Whiteside, Bazemore, picks, potentiall Simons/Collins?

[d-train]

Any scenario where we can obtain Blake Griffin at the deadline without giving up our core?

I.e. trading Whiteside, Bazemore, picks, potentiall Simons/Collins?

I wouldn't call Bazemore part of our core. To make a legal trade we would have to add $8.2M. It would work if we converted Hoard to a minimum contract and added him, Hood, and Skal to Bazemore. We would be pretty thin on the wings unless Mario and Trent started kicking it.

[BNM]

Any scenario where we can obtain Blake Griffin at the deadline without giving up our core?

I.e. trading Whiteside, Bazemore, picks, potentiall Simons/Collins?

I wouldn't call Bazemore part of our core. To make a legal trade we would have to add $8.2M. It would work if we converted Hoard to a minimum contract and added him, Hood, and Skal to Bazemore. We would be pretty thin on the wings unless Mario and Trent started kicking it.

I think you misunderstood his question. He wasn't calling Bazemore part of our core, he was asking about trading Whiteside, Bazemore, picks, Collins/Simons for Blake Griffin.

Salary wise, Whiteside comes withing $483K of working, so we'd have to throw in at least one small contract to make it work. As I proposed in another thread, if Nurk is back and looking decent by the trade deadline, I'd offer Whiteside + Little + pick(s) for Blake.

If Nurk comes back and looks good, Whiteside becomes redundant and we can leverage his huge expiring contract for a massive upgrade at PF.

We'd keep Collins and Simons and have Bazemore's $19 million expiring to leverage for an upgrade at SF (I proposed Robert Covington in the other thread).

[realboredcactus]

Any scenario where we can obtain Blake Griffin at the deadline without giving up our core?

I.e. trading Whiteside, Bazemore, picks, potentiall Simons/Collins?

I wouldn't call Bazemore part of our core. To make a legal trade we would have to add $8.2M. It would work if we converted Hoard to a minimum contract and added him, Hood, and Skal to Bazemore. We would be pretty thin on the wings unless Mario and Trent started kicking it.

I think you misunderstood his question. He wasn't calling Bazemore part of our core, he was asking about trading Whiteside, Bazemore, picks, Collins/Simons for Blake Griffin.

Salary wise, Whiteside comes withing $483K of working, so we'd have to throw in at least one small contract to make it work. As I proposed in another thread, if Nurk is back and looking decent by the trade deadline, I'd offer Whiteside + Little + pick(s) for Blake.

If Nurk comes back and looks good, Whiteside becomes redundant and we can leverage his huge expiring contract for a massive upgrade at PF.

We'd keep Collins and Simons and have Bazemore's $19 million expiring to leverage for an upgrade at SF (I proposed Robert Covington in the other thread).

Detroit in their current state would not take Whiteside, so there would need to be a 3rd team in the trade. But theoretically, I would not mind doing Whiteside + Baze + protected first for Blake if a 3-team trade or other thing is available