Hard capping massively limits what we can do. You can't go above the hard cap for any reason, so it makes it hard to send out lopsided trades because you can't replace the players that you sent out.
No matter what we at least need to add some size. Whether that’s a borderline all star or just a starter/bench player. I think Hart/combination of players should get us a borderline starting forward. I’m in minority I’m ok with doing very little. Just need to add some size but unless we get an star I’m not interested in trading Simons or Sharpe.
Not sure it actually makes a difference. It appears that management has an internal threshold to stay out of the tax... not that I blame them at all. The Hard Cap is ~$6M above the tax line. But since Portland's internal budget is less than the hard cap - the hard cap is irrelevant.
The Kyrie trade was kind of new. He demanded a trade.....boom it gone done. But none of the other rumored teams have pulled the trigger. Do we really have to wait until the day before the deadline?
Mavs looking for D help and are making Wood available. GP2/Winslow for Wood works money wise. Don’t really like Wood but he’s tall and an 18/8 guy.
I'm going to ask an ignorant question too. If TPEs exist, why do salaries seemingly always have to match (or be within a %)? I'm sure there's a threshold of how big a TPE is, but still.
Teams under the cap need not abide by the matching rules if they can simply absorb salaries into their books.
Our best 3 defenders are probably GP2 and Hart (at Guard) and Winslow (at Forward) Only Hart will probably get major minutes. So yeah I am ok with trading Winslow (Or GP2 or both) for a long player who can shoot because then we could slide Grant to SF at times and get me the 3 guard rotation I want with Dame, Ant, and Hart.
Given the range of probable outcomes, going over the tax line most likely does not pass the cost/benefit analysis for this season.
But we were told that a player who leads the NBA in rebounding AND blocks wasn't good for our team....but THIS guy is?
I don't view Wood as a center. We would still need one. Here is a list...is your guy on it? Who we talking about? https://www.persources.com/top-30-nba-centers-2022-2023-rankings/
the issue isn't signing Payton, it's signing him for an MLE above the tax-MLE. That hard-capped the Blazers but blaming Portland's seeming lack of flexibility on the Payton signing alone is misguided. To start with, there's the fairly obvious desire of the Vulcans for Portland to not pay tax. That very likely limits the Blazers to only making trades that bring in less salary than they send out (since they are just below the tax line) the biggest impact, and it's already being discussed, is with that TPE Portland got for trading Covington. A 12M TPE. Blazers could have used that to absorb a 12M contract. That would in turn give the other team a 12M TPE which is decent leverage for Portland to have but again, if the Vulcans are allergic to tax, the leverage of that TPE is limited
OK let me get this straight -- mavs looking for help on D -- Blazers have same issue but hell let's trade for Woods who is an avg defender at best and IF the Blazers did trade for Woods the team would prolly be worse on D but let's do it. How does this line of thinking make any sense ? -- If anything this could making getting a guy like JV from the Jazz harder cause the Mav's might get into the bidding.
People here just want to get rid of Nurk. There are quite a few here who delusionally believe that losimg Nurk is addition by subtraction. Has nothing to do with Wood.
Oh yesterday I mentioned how I would love to have to a center on our team as productive as WHiteside was compared to the "centers" we currently have and was told I was wrong for wanting that. Never will understand this place.