Again, in the scenario outlined, the Blazers would have to have 6 minimum salary players. $11.5M for Nurk only allows for rookies. For players with more than 2 years of service to take paycuts to play with Lebron, that would be $9M combined for those 6 spots, which would leave only 7.5M for Nurk. There are only so many gymnastics Olshey and co. can do if they're under a hard cap, which is why S&T basically isn't an option.
Well since this is all a fantasy............ Swanigan, whoever we pick this year, and 2019 draft pick. That is 3 young players that they would not have if LBJ goes to the Lakers. However the tougher sell is they have to take back some bad contracts in ET who went to Ohio State, and either Harkless or Biebs. Once LBJ leaves, Cleveland is no longer a FA destination so if I am them I would not care too much about the cap space.
Yeah, unless there are some major salary dump trades (which is also extremely unlikely) it seems silly to discuss any moves that involve a sign-and-trade. That leaves just two options if Lebron wants to come here. He'd have to take the tax-MLE or he'd have to pull a Chris Paul like you mentioned. The good thing about that for LeBron is we'd own his bird rights and could max him out in 2019 so he wouldn't really lose that much money, unlike Paul George who would be leaving a pretty significant amount of money on the table doing that.
Simple. You get rid of Harkless at least (NYK would take him for free), package a pick with Meyers, and throw in Aminu somewhere in the deal or to another team.
The whole team except Turner (no one wants his contract), Leonard (because he'll be the abuse target of S2), Layman (who really wants him?) just for him. lol