Salary Cap/Re-signing:
The Cap is projected to be $67 million. Guaranteed Contracts: Brandon Jennings ($8,344,497) Jodie Meeks ($6,270,000) (Josh Smith $5,400,000) Andre Drummond ($3,272,091) Kentavious Caldwell-Pope ($2,891,760) Spencer Dinwiddie ($845,059) (Aaron Gray $452,049)
Non-Guaranteed Contracts: Caron Butler ($4,500,000) Anthony Tolliver ($3,000,000) Shawne Williams ($1,356,146) Quincy Miller ($981,348)
Options: Cartier Martin ($1,270,964 — Player)
Restricted Free Agents/Cap Holds: Reggie Jackson ($5,510,922) — $4,433,683 qualifying offer
unrestricted Free Agents/Cap Holds: Tayshaun Prince ($11,561,798) Greg Monroe ($10,411,877) Joel Anthony ($7,220,000) John Lucas III ($947,276)
Draft Picks: Pick 8: $2,368,300 - Frank Kaminsky I've convinced myself that the best FA target for us is a SF, so I'm drafting the best fit and close to the best player available at 8. Although Johnson, Turner and Booker were in play.
Pick 38: $507,336 - Cliff Alexander I'm going for upside here. Alexander will spend the year in Grand Rapids and will hopefully replace Anthony in the lineup in 2016. He was once ranked ahead of Okafor in HS player rankings two years ago.
Cap Outlook:
Guaranteed Salary: $27,875,456 Non-Guaranteed Salary: $9,437,494 Options: $1,270,964 Cap Holds: $32,509,251 Total: $71,093,165
Trades: I don't see them being able to execute a S&T for Moose. My goal would be to trade Jennings for a draft pick or something useful near the trade deadline. However, I love the thought of him being a sparkplug off of the bench and if he buys in, we ride out the season with him.
Free agency: Renounce the rights to Prince, Monroe, Miller, Anthony (or quickly negotiate a lower annual salary) and Lucas. Signings: - Cartier Martin will opt in - Pickup the options on Tolliver and Butler - If possible, re-sign Joel Anthony to a deal around 2M per year
This puts us right around 41M in guaranteed deals, with Jackson's hold at 5M, we have approximately 30M to spend on 3 roster spots.
With Reggie Jackson testing the market, I'm prepared to offer a max deal to him primarily because of what step #2 is in FA. 15M per year.
Kris Middleton - max offer sheet, approximately 15M per year. Middleton is the perfect SF for this roster. He's a solid shooter and above average defender with good size for the position. Contingency plan includes looking at Jared Dudley, Corey Brewer and Dorrel Wright. However, given Milwaukee's depth at the 3/4 spots, despite them playing him at SG for some of last season.
Thomas Robinson - UFA - 3 yrs, 4M/yr - 12M Here's why: .180 WP48 and 3 wins produced in less than 900 minutes. For the sake of comparison, Pat Patterson played close to 2,100 minutes and produced 8.2 wins and had a .184 WP48. Josh Smith produced 3.8 wins in 2,300 minutes played. T.Robinson is by all accounts, a high-character guy and at 24, still might be able to develop a mid-range jumper. Worst case, he's an energy guy off the bench who can defend, rebound and convert around the basket. He's bounced around, but I look at it like this: Sacramento is terrible and I wouldn't believe in them to develop him. He was a salary cap casualty in Houston. I trust Portland to develop their players properly, so it's good that he was there for nearly two years. They have a lot of bigs already in the rotation, so the opportunity didn't come. He was traded in the package for Afflalo to Denver, which didn't need him at all. Enter Philly, where he actually played pretty well.
These moves put us right around 70M total...over the cap, but far enough below the luxury line for flexibility moving forward. KCP produced 3 wins last year and Klay Thompson was at 9. It's safe to assume with some growth this summer, he should outplay the value of his contract next year. That's why I opted for Middleton instead of Danny Green and drafting a SF.
The roster looks like this: C - Drummond/Kaminsky/Anthony PF - Tolliver/Robinson/Kaminsky/Alexander SF - Middleton/Butler/Martin SG - KCP/Meeks PG - Jackson/Jennings/Dinwiddie
