with respect to the difficulty with Lee’s BYC status.

I don’t think Lee will agree to a sign and trade with the Blazers.
He wants to start and play 30+ minutes. There’s only about 10-12 minutes available behind LMA. He’d want another 20 minutes at center. I don’t see him starting at center or getting that much time. Joel is a better defender, and GO has a more important future and needs all the minutes he can stay on the court.

Another large problem with a sign and trade for Lee is that he would be a BYC player. That makes trades very difficult.

For instance, without our $2.7M in cap space, if we traded Outlaw ($3.6M) plus Rudy ($1.2M) for Lee now we could take back $6.1M (125%*$4.8M + 100K). If Lee signed for $6M (he probably wouldn’t) then the Knicks could only take back $3M (because Lee is BYC) * 125% + 100K = $3.85M, so the deal doesn’t work. However, if NY threw in Joe Crawford the deal would just work because Crawford has a minimum salary (0.74M) which counts as an outgoing salary for Knicks but not as incoming salary for Blazers (according to my reading of Larry Coon’s salary cap FAQ #70).

But I wouldn’t trade Rudy in a deal for Lee. He has more value to us than Lee as long as Joel remains here (which I think he will).

A deal that would work, and one that I would do, would be to wait for the salary cap money at the start of the season and then trade Outlaw ($3.6M) plus Bayless ($2.1M) plus use our $2.7M in cap space for Lee ($7.6M) plus Crawford ($0.74M). (Knicks can receive $4.54M * 125% + 100K = $5.8M). We could go as high as $8.4M for Lee’s salary and the deal still works. Crawford’s minimum salary is again necessary to make the deals work.

Lee would probably be ok with that salary, but not the playing time in Portland. I doubt the Knick’s would value Bayless and Outlaw’s expiring contract enough to do the deal. But they are in a pickle because if they want to sign a max player like Wade or Lebron next summer they may have to renounce Lee then to get the cap space they will need (assuming he signs a decent one year deal with them now) to sign one of those guys.

I think the BYC calculations above are correct but if I messed something up I’m sure Storyteller or AK will correct me. :)

could, oh, magically pry Amar’e Stoudemire away from the Phoenix Suns. Personally, I’m not a fan of Stoudemire; however, if Walsh could hypothetically obtain him for rookie big man Jordan Hill, Cuttino Mobley’s heavily insured expiring contract, Chris Hunter and Joe Crawford’s non-guaranteed deals, and $3,000,000 in cash considerations, then he should do it as a way to appease Mike D’Antoni and hopefully entice LeBron James to leave Cleveland for the Big Apple come 2010.

http://games.espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=klr9zs

For the Suns, the only way this trade would ever happen is if Robert Sarver demanded that Steve Kerr cut costs for this upcoming season. In this example, here’s what the Suns would save by making my abovementioned trade proposal.

1. From the trade, the Suns would cut $2,922,205 in payroll and save $2,922,205 in pending luxury tax payments.

2. By waiving both Chris Hunter and Joe Crawford, the Suns would cut $1,472,840 in payroll and save $1,472,840 in pending luxury tax payments

3. Due to Cuttino Mobley’s contract being 80% insured, the Suns would recieve a $7,600,000 check to reimburse the team’s costs.

4. In total, that’s a savings of $16,390,090 for a player in Stoudemire who’s reportedly stated that he’d like to play elsewhere after this season.

Yet, the Suns would have to still be more creative to slide below the luxury tax level of $69,920,000 this season; though, it may be accomplished by waiving Sasha Pavlovic — whose contract is just partially guaranteed for $1,500,000 — and also trading Jared Dudley to a team like the Cleveland Cavaliers for Darnell Jackson and Jawad Williams, who both have non-guaranteed contracts and would be waived immediately after the trade.

http://games.espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=nrojxu

That’d ultimately give the Phoenix Suns with a payroll of $48,263,909 in 12 active players, $9,500,000 in 1 inactive player whose contract would be 80% insured, and $11,500,000 in two waived players. In total, that’d be a payroll of $69,263,909 and just $61,663,909 out of Sarver’s account.