Trade & FA 2024-25:

[omahen]

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.

My guess for the trade would be, that PJ will be included in the deal. There will not be many minutes left for PJ with Davis at four and KD at three and he would certainly lose his starting job. Not something very desirable in his contract year. 

Phoenix angle will be interesting. They don't have control of any of their picks. If tank would be considered, Houston would be their more natural trade partner, as they control their 2025, 2027 and 2029 picks, if I can understand that "1000 times" traded Phoenix picks and swaps correctly. I honestly can't understand who gets Phoenix 2026 pick if they suck in the next season. But, going full tank would also need to include trading Booker. 

However, the owner doesn't look like one patient enough for several tanking seasons. So the alternative would be to try to stay competitive. PJ, Klay and Gafford (although I wouldn't be surprised if they get Lively instead) all help in that regard. PJ substitutes KD in the starting line-up and Klay or Beal play the 6th man. They have several other decent vets like the other Martin, Allen and O'Neale. Who knows, perhaps they might actually function as a good unit, something no coach was able to do with their big three. They still have two bad picks from that 2031 pick split trade they made. Combined with more draft assets, they could still reshuffle the team some more (PG will be their biggest need).