Is there a deadline as to by what time their deals become guaranteed? I'd assume July 1st, right? But if it's right before next season or something, it'd be great as we could negotiate with free agents and only cut any of them after we come to an agreement. Also, assuming we can get none of Sessions/Miller/Kidd/Hedo etc., we would still have the Hinrich deal as a fall back if Chicago could still waive them.
They become guaranteed on July 1st. If Portland waives them instead for some reason it doubles our cap space from 7 to 14 million.
Too fucking bad. So without using up our cap space, we can only do a "salary dump" trade (Hinrich) with them for other teams until July 1st.
We can do a salary dump with them even later - only it will be for next year with the big 2010 free agents class that people will try to position themselves to. Also - after the start of the year and before the trade deadline - we can do a bigger coming-in/going-out trade because the Euro stashes do not count against the cap.
If we want to do a trade after the start of the season, how much more salary can we take back in a trade than at July 1?
Trading Sergio doesn't bump us up to the $8.5 million range? I thought we were at $7 million heading into the day.
Depends how much of our cap space we use up. The difference can be the standard 20% (?) plus our cap space at the time.
The cap space for the Euro-Stash kids does not count during the season - so in theory we can take an extra $2.6m in my very rough estimate - someone with more time/interest might want to check it.
The cap doesn't have to go up; Portland cut Sergio's salary from its books, which drops Portland $1.5 million further below the cap. Claver will add $0.5 or $1.0 million more back to the cap figure, but renouncing Koponen/Freeland would trim another $1.6 million from that cap figure.
To get to 8.5 the Blazers need to renounce Freeland and Koponen. Otherwise, unless the cap goes up for some reason the team has 7 million roughly. The question posed was that someone thought we were already at 8.5 with just Sergio gone. That is not correct.
So, what good quality free agent is going to sign with Portland for 7 million? I can't think of a single player available who is any good and would take that small amount.
Sessions... But my gut feeling is that the big catch will be via a trade - whatever FA we sign will be for a lesser role (like backup PF).
