New CBA agreement

[ItsGoTime]

Thanks for all of that.  I'd seen where TPE's expire each year, but didn't dream it would be at the end of the regular season.  Yikes!  

It seems really imperative that if Dallas wants to make a splash this summer, they need to either:

1. Get most of their work done in June

2. Get themselves well below the first apron and then do the things they want to do to get right back up to it (even if it hard caps them this year).   Maybe that is some or all of the TPE.  Maybe that is a trade with greater than 110% matching.  I'm more convinced than I was before that Kyrie's number is going to be flexible.  Whatever we have left up to a hair below the first apron.

Trading down in the draft for picks, players and to reduce salary starts to make more sense (Utah has multiple TPE's that would absorb McGee).  Maybe you S/W Bertans or maybe you S/W Reggie's guaranteed amount.  But if you want a sizable trade spread and use of most of the MLE, you can't stand still.

Once you have the team you want in place, you can fiddle around the edges (TP MLE and 100% trade matching) if you stay under the first apron.  Or, you can drift over the first apron and kind of screw your flexibility.  This may really hurt the little cottage industry that exists around player movement at the TDL and in the offseason.

Ok, this to me is the best argument to S/W Bertans. It all hinges on the execution though. It does make a much better case to use #10 to dump Bertans contract, however the 10 is overcompensation and there is little on their team I want back (Sochan?). SA seems like the only option at the draft, and with Wallace almost certainly available there would be really good incentive IMO. Question becomes what 3rd team? 

I’d say, if we want cap room, young rookie scale contract(s) are what we want back. A ton of the young names that are desirable are players just coming off of their rookie deal. Tough to get around a tampering investigation if we go after a snt deal at the draft. 

Is Atlanta a good option here? Something like:

Johnson to Atl
Collins, Bertans and #10 to SA
Bey to Dal

Can SA absorb that much salary at the draft? This gets us out of the S/W business and gets a young decent player in the process. The hope would be for Bey to fit in well from the start. Would asking for Sochan in such a deal be too much?

Another angle I haven’t seen talked about here is our use of the 5th year on Kyrie’s contract. If the number that makes him happy is in the $200M range, most have talked about a 4 year deal for him. What if we stretched that out to 5 years on a flat $40M per year type deal. I wonder if that works for him? That starts to look like getting max possible cap space now type negotiations.

Again, it’s all comes down to the execution of the space created.