Quote:
Originally Posted by spreedom
For one thing, I'd much rather have Batum than Ryan Anderson... he's a better player and would fill a lot more of this team's needs. But I get your point...
But the scenario you pitched is impossible. Parsons is likely getting $20M+ this summer, Whiteside will get a max contract, and Anderson is likely to get something in the neighborhood of $20M as well. We could trade every player on our roster outside of Dirk and would have trouble signing all three of those contracts... lest we forget after that fact that we spent virtually every penny of our cap space on four players, two of whom play the same position.
Let's look at our cap situation:
And let's assume we re-sign Parsons to $20M even, Dirk opts in, Deron opts out and we bring back McGee. That puts us at about $59M against what is currently projected as a $92M salary cap, so we'd have about $32.8M in cap space, with the following free agents to address: Deron, Zaza, Felton, David Lee, Charlie V and Powell (who is a restricted free agent but not one that we have any Bird rights on). Even if we let every one of those guys walk and sign Whiteside at about $23M, what he is eligible for. That gives us this roster:
Barea/Harris
Matthews/Anderson
Parsons/Evans
Nowitzki
Whiteside/Mejri/McGee
With about $10M left to spend in free agency. $10M won't get you Anderson or Batum. Hell, with the weak PG free agent market, it might not even be enough to keep Williams.
Our bottom line this summer is that if we bring back all of our main rotation free agents (Parsons, Williams, Felton and Powell) except for Zaza, we're already looking at being up against the cap. It's going to take some contract gymnastics to afford any of Whiteside, Batum, Anderson or Dwight Howard (who is my personal favorite among available free agents). If we want to bring back Parsons, who I think we should, we probably have to say goodbye to one or both of Barea and Harris, who are both on pretty great contracts, as well as Williams and Powell.
I hope the MBT figures things out this summer, because I really want to believe in our team next year, but they have their work cut out for them unless a lot of things fall our way with free agency. |
The way I see it we have 3 primary areas of need:
1. Shotblocker/Rebounder/Defender
2. Skilled scorer (preferably someone who can create and get to the basket)
3. Starter quality PG
We will have to compromise in at least one of those areas if we vastly improve in any one of them.
Mejri, Barea and Anderson are key components of filling those needs imo because one of them could step up to fill one of those 3 areas of need when we compromise.
I'm not sure what the priority would be but I'd hate to max out #1 on that list when there might be someone out there who could platoon with Mejri.
If we can sign a skilled scorer then Barea might be adequate at PG with Harris as a backup.
I think Anderson could become a huge piece to the puzzle next year but would really have to step it up offensively if we sign someone like Whiteside.
Bottom line, I think we are in a position where we have to sign the best player that is willing to come here no matter what position they play because this team is in dire need of adding some star power but has some nice pieces at most positions to fill the voids in areas that we simply won't have the cap room to address.