Trade & Free Agency 2026/2027

[loki]

I mean the reason free agency has not been used recently is because teams are not letting guys hit it very often.  There is rarely much there to choose from, and you never know who will be there until very late in the game.  I mean flexibility is always good, but it would require a lot of uncertainty to generate enough cap space to sign a massive contract like Luka.

I'm not against trading PJ in general, but I don't think I would do it for an older player that I hate with two years left on his contract and a crappy first round pick.

Right now they only have Flagg, PJ, and Gafford on the books. Whoever they draft this year will have a team option in 28. The other question marks are Kyrie, Lively, Christie, and Marshall. I don't think it's that difficult to preserve cap space with some combination of those players, but not if you keep all of them. My priorities would be Lively, Christie, and the draft picks. 

Even if you don't ultimately sign someone with the cap space, you could use it to take on bad contracts for picks in years where you have none.