I'm still kind of euphoric that olshey was fired and CJ was traded. The afterglow hasn't worn off yet
Woj specifically cites OKC/Spurs/Portland as potential teams that could open up max space to offer Ayton a deal in RFA. Phoenix can still match or pursue S&Ts, but I tend to think our likelihood of landing Ayton is higher than others like Bridges or LaVine.
To the cap experts, what would it take to do a double S&T of Nurk for Ayton... or something like that? We can also open up close to max space if we just simply renounce Nurk's 12 mil caphold. A S&T would give Phoenix something in return so Ayton doesn't just walk for nothing. Sarver appears to be balking at giving him the max, but I don't think it's that cost prohibitive. This is still the sorta baby max for Ayton coming off his rookie deal. I think he's a ~30 mil player if healthy.
Keeping Hart and the RFA and bird rights on Ant, it's almost impossible. It's really close though and if we could just dump someone like Nas for a future first or a second this year or something, we could probably offer a fifth year player a max deal. If we let Hart walk it's an easy fit. A double sign and trade wouldn't work because Nurk isn't going to make close to the money that Ayton will. Ant won't even get paid enough to make that work. Oh and Nurk's cap hold is 18M.
As I posted in the "Maudlin May" thread, the Suns believe they have a deal available for a true superstar player who wants out of his current situation in return for a signed-and-traded Ayton.
the big problem is that Ayton would be a BYC contract in a S&T. That creates a differential that is tough to bridge for instance, say he signs for 25M (too much in my view). Phoenix would only get credit for 12.5M in outgoing salary while the Blazers would have 25M coming in. That would mean the most the Suns could take back would be 15.7M. The least the Blazers could trade would be 20M. That's a 4.3M gap and that creates a CBA game of bop-a-mole
I don’t really care how we make it all work but id like our frontcourt to be Ayton and Jabari. That is all.
Separate trades? Does that work? Like we sign him outright and then trade talent for trash in a separate trade?
Odds are extremely low we could get Ayton. Planets have to line up for S&T, plus we don't have a player that would get them over the hump.
If it was only for 25M we'd have enough cap room to do it if we just renounced our rights to Nurk, we wouldn't have to trade anyone. If we had to offer the max to get him we'd either have to let Hart walk or trade Nas or Justise for like a second rounder or a future first and just sign an undrafted rookie in their place. Oh and this is assuming that we draft no higher than 6 and fill out the roster with rookie min players. If we move up to the first pick we'd have to clear out both Nas and Justise.
No planets have to line up for us to let Nurk and Hart walk. We'd have a pretty big hole at whatever forward position we don't fill in the draft but hey maybe our second rounder would be the next Herb Jones or both Nas and Justise stay healthy.
to sign Ayton outright, assuming he'd get the max, the Blazers would have to renounce their rights to Nurkic, their MLE, all their TPE's, and maybe even Hart. All for Ayton? the Warriors just made it to the WCF with Looney as their only C. They are spending 7.3M on Looney and Bjelica The Mavs are spending 19M on Powell and Kleber and Kleber is way overpaid. IMO, spending 33M/year on a traditional C is not a good idea
Yeah, I think if the intel was that Bridges could be had for the max, he'd be the smarter of the two. At that point we would probably want to draft a C with our first round pick though. Duren fits the bill of "super athletic big" that Dame has been begging for. The shitty thing is that we could renounce the rights to Nurk and possibly Hart just to be matched by one of those two teams.