with a 121M salary cap; here are the teams that theoretically have the cap-space to give out a 20M deal:
View attachment 47449
https://www.basketball-reference.com/contracts/
(
cap-holds not counted in those numbers)
* Memphis has Steven Adams; and the cap-holds for Tyus Jones and Kyle Anderson wipes out their space
* Chicago has Vucevic and their 21M in space doesn't account for LaVine
* Indiana traded a better version of Nurkic to make room for Turner as starting C. They also want to re-sign Jalen Smith
* Detroit has Stewart, Olyniyk, and Garza at C; and, they have a 28M cap-hold for Bagley that wipes out their space
* Orlando has committed to Wendall Carter Jr. at C; they also have a 22M cap-hold for Bamba and may re-sign Gary Harris (32M cap-hold)
* San Antonio has Poeltl, Zach, and Landale at C; and a 13M cap-hold on Lonnie Walker
there are also going to be other free agent C's, many of whom may be willing to sign for cheap (some did this season):
Serge Ibaka
Tristan Thompson
Montrezl Harrell
Mo Bamba
Chris Boucher
Kevon Looney
JaVale McGee
Robin Lopez
Gorgui Dieng
Dwight Howard
Enes Freedom
LaMarcus Aldridge
Ed Davis
Hassan Whiteside
Andre Drummond
Cody Zeller
Bol Bol
Frank Kaminsky
Nemanja Bjelica
Drew Eubanks
Isaiah Hartenstein
Moses Brown
between Nurk's skills and his injury history, I don't see any team that would be inclined to give Nurkic much more than 12M let alone 20M. Just about every team with cap-space on that list above already has C's as good as Nurk; and many are more suited to the modern NBA. He may actually be capped around the MLE.
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I'll suggest something else too: I've gone thru the teams with cap-space and my 'hunch' is that the market for Simons at 20M/year may be even more limited than Nurkic at 12M/year. I'm really hoping that Cronin does not pull an Olshey and bid against himself for Ant & Nurk. I started out thinking that they might combine for 40M in first year salary. After looking at the markets for them, I'm thinking there is a chance the Blazers might get them for closer to 30M than 40M
obviously all it would take is one GM to blow my notion out of the water; I'm just hoping that GM isn't Cronin