07-07-2021, 11:58 PM
(07-07-2021, 04:46 PM)JamesConway Wrote: Kleber and Brunson make a sense for ATL in a SnT. Kleber could play the Collins role cheaper and they are reportedly looking for a backup PG. Should be a solid base for SnT negotiations.
If Collins wants Dallas, I'm not sure it will take that much.
By my calculations, if you assume Dallas lets THJ and WCS go then they'll have about $23.4mm in cap space. Let's say they want in on Collins at his $28mm max. The easy way is for JRich to decline his option and become a FA. But that's out of the team's control, so let's try the hard way.
There was that rumor at the trade deadline that Dallas offered Atlanta Maxi for Collins. Atlanta declined at the time, as that deal wasn't good enough for them during the season. Fair enough. But now things are more complicated in terms of money.
To me, the play is easy. Maxi is a pretty good role player on a reasonable contract who would be super easy to gift to any team with cap space or a TPE for nothing but a pick in return. Do that, and Dallas could sign Collins to max offer sheet. So Nico's call to Atlanta is pretty simple -- "Do you want Maxi or not? Because we're trading him and offering Collins a max deal regardless. Your choice."
Worst case is that they decline the trade, milk the waiting period, and leave Dallas hanging on other FAs they like before matching. But there's already enough smoke around the ownership hedging their bets about retaining Collins that I'm not sure they'd go that route. So it's certainly not without risk, but it's also something that I think could be negotiated ahead of time via the agent (Schwartz) with a pretty high degree of confidence of what Atlanta plans to do with his client.
It will be really interesting to see which teams Collins shows the most mutual interest in outside of Atlanta. Knowing how this business works, I suspect we'll start seeing some rumors leak soon enough. If it's Dallas, I think they have a real shot.