I'm not going to say my numbers are perfect, but I think they're close. The starting point is $149.4M, including cap holds. Guaranteed salaries are $104.9M, but we have $5.2M in stretch provisioned contracts to consider, so we're at $110M. Nurkic MAX contract is 25% of the cap, which is roughly what Dame makes. Add him in and the roster charge (vet minimum x 3) for 3 roster spots (since we're only at 9 players at this point), and we're at $139M. Luxury Tax threshold is $123M, so we're $16M over, even if we renounce Vonleh, Davis, Napier, Connaughton, and Morrow. Even if we renounced them all and just used Nurk's cap hold figure, we're well over the cap and have no room to offer a FA cap space. We can offer MLE and other exceptions though (BAE, vet minimum). EDIT: I did not include Layman as I think he's simply going to be renounced. His contract is not guaranteed. Also, Mo will likely get a $500K bonus, which I didn't include. That would make my $110M figure and @42N8Bounce's identical.
Outside of Meyers, Olshey has been very good in the Draft. It's his trades, FA signings and offers that very fortunately were turned down that has been the issue.
The Davis and Aminu contracts were excellent, getting Lopez for nothing, taking a flyer on TRob, Harkless.... all really good. We avoided Chandler Parsons, but I'd definitely consider trading ET for Parsons straight up right now. The Turk was just traded for Carmelo, so other GMs like him, too. He's done really well outside the draft, too, though not perfect.
The test for these two will be when we play GSW. If they refer to the Portland as a Cali team again this year the criticism will return. But in all serious, I watched to the game on mute.
