Trade & FA 2024-25:

[Ghost of Podkolzin]

If Nico can find a way to make Gafford happy being a 12 min backup and convince him to sign at a discount when Gaff is at his prime age of 28, I will be all in and will worship Nico for the rest of my life.

The only way I see Gafford resigning,  is if Kidd can find a way to play Lively and Gaff together for several minutes. I honestly think Lively has it in him to develop into a decent offensive weapon and his athleticism and length should allow him to be able to defend many PFs in the league.
One of the highlights of Lively's scouting reports before the draft was his unique ability to switch out on smaller players. I think Kidd should experiment a little with that if Lively develops some offensive skills.

I hear you, but there are a lot more minutes than 12 for Gafford.  Try to look at it as total minutes available to a position (82 games x 48 minutes = 3,936 minutes).  Lively only played 1,293 minutes last year (55 games, 23.5 minutes), Gafford 1,816 (71 games, 24.5 minutes).  

If both Lively and Gafford play the same number of games at 28mins, the total minutes is 3,612, over 300 minutes left over.