I would not give up the seventh pick in a sign and trade, that's too much and Bridges is going to get a lot more than the just under 25M that Bledsoe's contract can match. I do however think that Nas's salary would make it work. That would be like 23M so that would make it feasible to sign Bridges to a contract that starts at up to ~29M. We would be hard capped at that point and I still wouldn't give them the 7th pick straight up but I would give them the rights to whoever we draft at 7, Bledsoe and Nas for the rights to whoever they draft at 15 and Bridges. That would hard cap us though. So our maximum total salaries would be about 155M. If we made that trade and signed Ant and Nurk to a total of ~40M, we'd be at like 153M. We'd still have to sign three more players two of which would presumably be our second rounders but we couldn't sign them to multi year deals because we wouldn't have any exception to do it with so we could only sign them to a rookie minimum deal. Dame, Ant, Bridges, pick 15, Nurk, Hart, Justise, pick 36, Trendon, Keon, Greg, Didi, pick 57 and a vet min player wouldn't be a bad roster. Depending on how good Ant, Bridges and whoever we get with 15 are it could be one of the best teams Dame has played with.
$29M to start is WAY too much for Bridges. He's a ~$18-20M player. I'd much rather have John Collins for $23M/yr over Bridges at almost $30M
I'm fine with Nurk going out and trying to get a massive contract. Because either it'll show he's not worth it OR some other team will be dumb enough to over pay him and Portland can walk away.
