Portland Trail Blazers
D720 Free Agency preview - What's my Cap again? (part 1/2)
Jun 5, 2019 5:36:48 GMT -5
billy, Paul Pierce, and 10 more like this
Post by Theodore Duncan on Jun 5, 2019 5:36:48 GMT -5
There was already an article about teams with an actual cap space this off season. Well let’s take a look at the team’s in the other end of spectrum in another D720 Off-Season review. These are the teams that with their every move have to first think if this will take them over the hard cap.
Assumption is that we will have salary cap of $109 million for season 2019/20. This will mean a hard cap of $163.5 million and a luxury tax of $136.25 million.
Tier 1 - Excuse me sir, your Cap is on Fire!
Teams in this tier are deep over salary cap and are already having issues fitting under the current hard cap, even if they want to just resign even their own key players.
In no particular order.
Golden State Warriors
Key FA Paul George has luckily only played 9 seasons and is eligible only for 30% max (starting at 32.7M) and not the 35% max deal starting at 38.15million. Still just to make room to sign PG13 Warriors have to make some moves before off season starts
Although not much, let’s not forget also about the 30th pick, which will take around 1.5M guaranteed money. Maybe that asset has to be used even to open up more money.
GSW can forget about adding depth with MLE in this cap situation, and it's more likely that they have to get rid of some the good bench players
Anyways, with most of the core signed in long term deals and facing a repeater luxury tax in 2020, GSW is looking to stay in the this tier for years to come.
Minnesota Timberwolves
@xavier0717 has been dealing with one of the highest payrolls already this season, just juggling under the hard cap with his multiple trades. With cap hit of $137.9 million they have $25.5M cap space before hitting hard cap. Main focus will be of course to re-sign DeMarcus Cousins. Will the $25.5M be enough to resign him?
Luckily Minnesota has already a good deep roster, so no cap space is needed to bring in more role players.
Knowing KG’s trading history, all that I wrote here will be already outdated at the start of free agency :)
Cleveland Cavaliers
Another championship contender that needed to make moves to keep their core intact. And they already started while I was preparing this article.
With Cavs already giving up their unprotected 2022 1st to get rid of Marcus Smart salary (and assuming declining TO of J.Patton), they are looking to have about $56.6 million cap space under hard cap to resign their to all-stars Klay Thompson and Nikola Vucevic. In theory this should be enough with 28 million per head, but if either receives even a 30% max offer from another team, things might get bit tight. With this move they could probably move down one tier, but I'll keep them here for now.
Even if re-signing this team goes smoothly, with certainty they will be facing even bigger problems with hard cap next year with 20million repeater luxury tax penalty kicking in. So, it’s also likely that many players will have to be moved during next year. Will that cause FAs demanding no-trade clauses from Nino Brown?
Chicago Bulls
With a closer look we can see that the max-extensions of KAT and Booker will count for a whopping $54.5 million. As those contracts will kick in Bulls will be already over the hard cap with close to $171 million in salaries.
But let’s not forget also that Bulls got lucky in the lottery and own now the 3rd pick. That rookie contract is projected to be starting at around $6.5 mil, so the cap figure just keeps on rising to around 178million guaranteed money.
It would be possible to decline TOs of Terrence Ferguson and Deyonta Davis to shed $4mil of salary, but both are actually showing some promise and in cheap deals. But still at least around additional 11million more needs to be gotten rid off. Seem like a one of the Whiteside, KPC, Noel has to go, but does Bulls also have to get rid of one of their young assets to do so? Paul Pierce has a great young core, but navigating though this difficult cap situation will need all his skill. Interesting to see how he handles this.
Stay tuned for part 2 next week. Then we will look at teams that shouldn't be having too much challenges this free agency, but might be looking bigger issues with 2020 off-season with upcoming rookie extensions, repeater luxury taxes, etc...
Philadelphia 76ers
Chicago Bulls
LA Clippers
Miami Heat
Oklahoma City Thunder
Orlando Magic
