If he gets a setback from his rehab and is deemed unable to play next season, his contract will be a helluva lot more valuable than RLEC's was, especially when you consider how many teams are fighting for capspace in '10.
Roy and Aldridge are going to count for over 25 million against the cap no matter what, unless we renounce their rights and let them become unrestricted FA next offseason. If we sign them to extensions 25 million is probably conservative (if guys like Bynum and Bogut can get 10-12 million dollar starting salariesI have to believe Aldridge will see at least 12-13 million, and Roy getting anything less than 14-15ish he can make maximum would be a steal). But even if we don't extend them this offseason, we still have the nasty business of their free agent capholds, and as both are coming off of rookie scale contracts that makes their capholds pretty high (Roy= ~12million, LA= ~14-15million). Combined with the ~20 million we would have committed Joel, Oden, Bayless, Rudy, Batum, and the ~2.5 million in additional roster spot cap holds. that leaves us in the neighborhood of a 47-50 million cap number, and unless the cap suddenly booms (not gonna happen) that only leaves ~10 million in cap space. So the question then becomes, is renting Tmac for 1 year (1 year removed from his latest catastrophic injury) plus any player that we can realistically sign to a 10 million dollar starting salary worth Blake, Outlaw, Webster, every pick we have in the 09 and 2010 drafts (because we would have to renounce all their rights), the rights to all our overseas players(again, have to renounce them to free up room), oh yea and Sergio too. Or we could just use the existing 7-9 million in cap room, or dump Blake/Outlaw and get that cap room even higher, to sign someone this offseason. (And the max for Lebron's starting salary if he signs a new deal in 2010 will be approx 17-18 million dollars, depending on where the cap threshold moves)
Your numbers seem a little off to me. Joel = 6.85 Oden = 5.36 Bayless = 2.14 Rudy = 1.16 Batum = 1.18 Assuming Roy and Aldridge average 13 million each or 26.0 I get 42.7 I don't get where the 2.5 mil cap hold comes into play because what is there to hold? But even with that 2.5 million cap hold for I don't know what, it still only puts us at 45 million. The cap should be at about 60 million leaving us still with 15 million. Players like Blake, Outlaw and Webster are a dime a dozen. Maybe James is out of the picture, but it's a move you should make. Roll the dice and see if they come up 7, because the worse thing than can happen is you have 15 million dollars available to you in the best FA year in NBA history according to "experts".
Also you need to factor in the salary for this year's draft pick, the cap hold for next year's draft pick, Koponen, Freeland, and the exceptions. Once you do that I believe we're closer to $5M ($7M if we didn't retain our rights to Kop and Free, or keep any of our draft picks in the next couple of drafts.) in space.
As someone already pointed out, your using the wrong year's salary in your calculation. Batum/Rudy/Bayless don't go up to much, but the salaries you should be using for Greg and Joel are about 2 million more combined. The 2.5 in cap holds is for the roster spot cap holds, they're equivalent to the rookie minimum, and you incur 1 such penalty for every roster spot you have open under the minimum 12 player roster, so 5 open spots at ~500k. That all comes out to about 47.5 million, and I personally think the cap could end up anywhere from 57-60 million next offseason. And as I said that's the bare minimum if we renounce all our overseas players and drafted players for the next 2 drafts, so it's not just Webster/Trav/Blake/Sergio we're loosing here all of which I would freely give up to get our hands on a big upgrade at the 1 or the 3, but also all our potential picks. Then comes the actual list of free agents that offseason, which while impressive, seems limited in it's selection of what i would consider upgrades worthy of such sacrifice. The only UFA point guard possibly worth the sacrifice is Tony Parker (every other promising player at the point is an RFA). And outside of Lebron the only UFA small forward upgrades which seem worth it now, Butler and Prince imo, will both be 30 by next offseason. Personally I think it's better for the team to look to use what cap we have(or can free up by renouncing Kop/Freeland and maybe Trav/Blake) on a player like Sessions, as well as trading some of the assets we have to move up in the draft for a guy like Blair. We can likely hold onto at least Webster and probably Blake as well (although it we sign sessions I'd still like to see Bayless be the backup).
I agree. I think using the freed-up space this season to get a realistic target, like Sessions, is a much better plan than to pare payroll down as much as possible to dream on next season's free agent class. I think the amount of free agent movement that will take place next season is very overstated. Chris Bosh might move, LeBron James maybe has a tiny chance of switching teams...but in both cases, I think only a couple of teams (New York, Miami) are in the mix.
Never. Houston realized this year that they play better without him even when he is healthy. Don't waste any assets on him.
