That could make a good thread all on its own, though this one is perfectly fine for it:
- You're Jon Horst. Marc Lasry has told you you need to convince Giannis to stay, and has given you total carte blanche to do so
- You can spend whatever you like, trade away whatever you like, just make the 20-21 team as fearsome as possible
- Giannis has said he's going to wait and see until after the draft before making a decision to demand a trade or not
What can you do?
- You can take on additional salary from the 20% buffers around trades in and out.
- You have basically no free agents to renounce, maybe Korver at $2.5, Connaughton at $1.7, but that's it. Your 2021 commitments stand at $132.3, unless you convince Robin Lopez and/or Wesley Matthews to decline their options.
- 2021 limits are projected to be Cap $115M, Luxury Tax at $139M, Tax Apron at $145M, but that was
pre-pandemic. Let's just assume that remains the case and the NBA eats some of the difference with an agreement to make it up later in reduced increases, just so there's not a big drop that crunches the market.
- It'd be fun to imagine that they
might be able to Amnesty Eric Bledsoe, but that's speculative right now.
- You do own all of your first-rounders after this year, plus
#24 this year from Indy, and
maybe the Cavs' pick in 2022.
So you have some assets, but also a very tight financial straitjacket requiring either unloading some salary to enable the full MLE, or giving other teams salary relief + picks in order to trade you better players. I think you could find some trade partners out there, it's just going to cost Lasry an arm and a leg. Could you get Ayton from Phoenix? Is there a package that could upgrade Bledsoe / Hill / etc into Damian Lillard, if Portland decides they can't compete under the supermax? I'm no NBA trade-speculation expert, I just want to hear from those who are.