Rudy, Roy, Lebron, Aldridge and Oden down at the court.. Dammit.. why do I do this to myself

RELC expire and use the money for signing our core. We make a couple minor trades to deal with the inevitable glut at SF and possibly PG if a great opportunity arises. Other than that, I see little else. We already have our superstars and I doubt Kevin would trade our young superstars for a vet superstar…wouldn’t make sense.

I think all this possible trade talk will end up be very anti-climatic; similar to most new Hollywood films.

Peace

the first thing would be to add up the ‘definite’ contracts that will be applied to team salary: pryzbilla, oden, aldridge, webster, roy, fernandez, rodriguez, batum & bayless.

those 9 players would put portland’s team salary at around 32.6 million (assumption on webster is around 4.3 million), and the automatic cap-holds for a 12 man roster would bump portland up around 34 million.

next would come the salary cap level itself. is the economy going to keep the cap at this year’s level? the cap could be 57 million or it could be 61 million. Assuming a 60 million cap would leave portland with 26 million in cap-space.

Now comes the issue of the 3 rotational players that weren’t listed: outlaw, blake, & frye. At this point, Channing looks like a likely casualty of the cap-space option. He hasn’t been playing well and he will have a 9.5 million cap-hold. Unless he’s willing to sign quickly for a dicounted salary, he will almost certainly be gone.

Blake’s salary is 4 million and travis’s is 3.6 million. Now those could get plugged back into the Blazer’s team salary depending on who the blazers are targeting. A problem is that the options on those players have to be exercised by portland about 10-14 days before free agents could be signed. In any event, assuming 1 or both or neither of the two players are kept, Portland’s projected cap-space would be 18-26 million.

Then of course come the options. The first calender-wise, would be the next draft. KP is a draft day wizard, and he ‘coincidentally’ has 5 draft picks in the draft immediately before the impending cap-psace. And that 1st round pick would represent a guaranteed contract that would automatically reduce cap-space. KP will have a lot os assets to utilize if he chooses to make that the big trading day. And I believe it’s possible to construct trades that would have as a component, that cap-space. So a lot could happen for portland on draft day.

For example, suppose KP had a reasonable expectation that he could land Hedo Turkoglu as a free agent. And suppose another team at draft time had a trade exception of 4-5 million. That’s the case almost every season. I could see a trade in that case that would have portland send out either webster or outlaw plus the 2009 1st round pick for the trade exception plus a couple of future 1st round picks. Portland would gain cap-space, exchange a 1st that would reduce cap-space for future picks, and also gain either a 3.6 million or 4.3 million TPE. That’s a fairly effective trade if a chunk of the cap-space was used to sign a player like Hedo.

That space portland will have will give KP some great leverage when it comes to trades. Not only can portland offer immediate salary and cap-relief to another team, but if a player, for example Vince Carter was traded, the other team would also receive a huge trade exception as well.

The free agent list isn’t that impressive. Hedo Turkoglu is at the top of the list assuming he opts out (fairly safe assumption). Other possibilities are Brandon Bass, Ben Gordon, Anderson Varejao, and even a step into the darkside of Ron Artest.

From everything that KP and Tom Penn have said, it appears the Blazer front office is intent on that cap-space. Obviously, the darius miles situation is a fly in the ointment, but my guess would be that no trades will happen for portland till draft day…they want to grab that cap-space ball and run with it.

Never forget about trades unrelated to free agents. Rumor has it that Tinsley may go to Charlotte – giving them 3 PG’s. Wallace is said to be available, and Battier’s a possibility. Then you have some teams, like Dallas, Minnesota, Washington and San Diego off to poor starts, any one of which may decide by spring that they need to restructure and or rebuild. Along the way, you have players like Gordon that seem unhappy, or a player like Hinrich being played out of position. We have cap space and pieces. Not including Diogu, we have 12 players, all of which either now, or in the near future, are skilled enough to play on the 1st or 2nd teams of many other teams. The two sitting right now are Bayless, and likely Batum when Webster returns. But Rudy’s playing time also makes it likely that one of the three of Frye, Trout, and Webster will not have many minutes as well. Then, in addition to these players, you’ll need to move the player at the position that you’ve just traded for. And, to spice it up, toss in the Bayless – Sergio rivalry. Sergio’s Spanish agent’s recent comments make it pretty clear that if Mac tries to play Bayless at all, then Sergio – who will lose minutes – is not going to be a happy camper. As in gone.

Let’s not rule out our ability to snag a player next summer who makes it clear to their organization that they won’t resign.

How all the high profile free agents in 09/10 play one of the positions that our Big 3 play? There are no point guards that interest me (steve nash? too old at this point) and really only one small forward who we probably won’t get (LeBron). I’m very intrigued as to what KP has planned, because there really isn’t an immediate no-brainer target for us.

The three year extension available to Wade, James, Bosh will net them $69M over the three years while as a FA they can resign at $140M over 6 years with an opt out at 3 allowing them a security blanket in case of injury of $71M extra. I suspect they will wait to take that as that is the reason for their current opt out – to get them over 30% of cap limit instead of 25% they currently have and another 3 years gives them 35% of cap.

Another factor not discussed is the projection they must make on the economy. Should we go into significant deflation there will be no team to offer them these dollars including their current teams.

You are correct that the other teams will have an enormous cap charge for a 5 year contract starting with 2010 for Pierce and Nowitzki with almost $35M needed to be under the cap and possibly $32M for Redd. For the younger guys the cost is still staggering and only NY and Dallas and maybe LAL and Portland can afford them. Bosh and Stoudemire going somewhere else depends on the Toronto folks’ budget and their willingness to offer the max likewise, Phoenix. Likely none of these guys are leaving their current teams. It is simply the timing of their options that governs their choice.

Great discussion starter Dave. As usual, you have used up a bit of my time in considering your perspective!