Trade & FA 2024-25:

[F Gump]

FGump and Smitty have already done a lot of the legwork for a potential Durant trade and really it'd take:

Gafford+Klay+Martin+Naji+Hardy. That gets you right to 54.4 mil. Durant is right at 54. PHX can't take back more salary, so the Mavs would probably have to do OMax+Powell instead of Naji or Martin. That gets you to roughly ~52 mil. 

Now if Kyrie takes a deal just enough to keep the Mavs under the 2nd apron, then I believe this would be a legal deal. A lot to give up, but KD is still KD.

A big part of a KD trade match is not only matching KD's massive $55M salary with a lot of much smaller contracts, but also cleaning out enough payroll room to re-fill the roster with minimum salary players and still stay under the Apron 2 hard cap. So finding players who add up to 55M isn't good enough - you have to be sending out much more than that, with some of it going to a 3rd team. That's part of the challenge, because if the 3rd team is getting junk, they'll want picks too. That's a killer.

My working solution is that part of the resulting trade process will be that the 3rd Team will be a contender team who will take someone like Klay or Gaff without sending back salary, and who should even give the Mavs a pick for the value they are getting (assuming ~ahem~ the Mavs FO can negotiate to make that happen, which makes me cringe to even say, but seems very doable if there's just a modicum of competence).

So the bottom line is that the outbound will have to include almost EVERYONE besides Kyrie, AD, and assuming Lively and Christie are not on the table either. There is probably room for 1 other player who won't have to be included, and I prefer keeping PJ over others. But EVERYONE ELSE.