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Raptors Salary Cap Situation (and planning for the future)

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  • DanH
    replied
    Some rumours going around and info about the pieces involved:

    Portland trading #3 pick, maybe.

    #3 pick will make 9.6M. This will matter for tax calcs but won't count in the trade math.
    Pascal makes 37.9M, so Portland would need to send at least 30.23M in outgoing salary to match.
    OG makes 18.6M, so Portland would need to send at least 14.83M.
    Portland has an 8M TPE, so could take back Otto or Thad or a prospect (vet seems more likely) without needing to match salary.

    Key Portland salaries:
    Simons 24.1M
    Nurk 16.9M
    Sharpe 6.3M
    Little 6.3M
    Knox 3M
    Johnson 2.8M

    Portland will almost certainly want to operate over the cap so they can retain Jerami Grant, so salary matching will be important. Probably want to be a tax team in their final throw of the dice with Dame.

    Most obvious combinations are Simons plus one or Little or Sharpe to be able to match Pascal, or just Simons to match OG. But I bet they lean more to including Nurk and paying more prospect price to get the Raps to eat his years and be able to keep Simons for their push towards contention. So, Nurk and both Sharpe and Little as a match for Pascal (plus 3 and whatever other picks are needed), or just Nurk to match OG (plus whatever assets are needed, probably #3 plus either one of Sharpe/Little or a future pick).

    Houston trading #4 pick, maybe.

    #4 pick will make 8.7M, again not used in trade math.
    Houston is easier, since they project to be way under the cap, so even with them wanting to sign Harden they can make pretty much any trade work adding up to like 25M or more.

    Key Houston salaries:
    KPJ 15.9M
    Jalen Green 9.9M
    Smith Jr 9.3M
    Tate 6.5M
    Eason 3.5M
    I dunno, a whole bunch more prospect types in the 2-3M range.

    No real obvious constructions here but real easy to make anything work.

    Leave a comment:


  • DanH
    replied
    OK, status of salaries for next season, for the moment.

    Pascal Siakam $37,893,408
    Fred Van Vleet $22,824,074 (PO)
    Gary Trent Jr $18,760,000 (PO)
    OG Anunoby $18,642,857
    Chris Boucher $11,750,000
    Scottie Barnes $8,008,549
    Thad Young $8,000,000
    Otto Porter Jr $6,300,000
    Precious Achiuwa $4,379,527
    Malachi Flynn $3,873,025
    Christian Koloko $1,720,003

    13th pick $4,469,412

    Assuming both Fred and Gary opt out (they will), that's 105M to 10 players including our pick. Waiving Thad could save 7M, which would mean 98M to 9 players.

    Cap is projected at 134M, tax at 162.8 M.

    Empty slots below 12 players count as 1M each, so max cap room is 33M. Max salary for an RFA is 33.5M, max salary for a typical UFA is 40.2M. Supermax is 46.9M.

    Free agents of note are Fred, Gary and Jak. Of less note, Dalano, who is RFA with early Bird Rights. Joe Wieskamp has a non-guaranteed deal as well, but his guarantee date is before July so I suspect they waive him, they'd have no rights to him if so. If not, toss another player and 2M salary on the pile. They technically also have Will Barton's non-Bird Rights so can sign him for just above the minimum.

    Dowtin and RHJ are also RFAs coming off two-way deals.

    MLE is 12.2M this year. Vet minimum is 2M.

    Assuming the 105M to 10 players, that leaves 57.8M to add 4 players, including presumably the three key FAs, assuming we want to duck the tax (almost certainly do).

    We have Bird Rights to all three key FAs, so can give max raises and backload as much as possible to squeeze them in this summer. A 4 year deal with max raises starts at 89% of the AAV (so for example, a 30M AAV deal starts at 26.8M). A 5 year deal with max raises starts at 86% of the AAV (so a 30M AAV deal starts at 25.6M).

    Assuming something like 30M AAV for Fred, 20M AAV for Gary and 20M AAV for Jak, all at 4 years, that means 60.2M. Another player is likely another 2M, so we are 5M over budget, meaning we likely make a move to reduce salary. Could be as simple as waiving Thad, replacing with a 2M player. Just does it. Any of those FAs getting more money though would mean instead we need to trade someone (Boucher is a candidate as he should have some value and with both Koloko and Precious needing steady bench minutes might be time to move him to clear some) into cap room to free up enough wiggle room.

    Leave a comment:


  • DanH
    replied
    Heatdreamer wrote: View Post
    Flynn salary is 3.8 million for next year, a minimum player or a veteran minimum of $1.7 Million still is a savings of $2.1 Million. As you stated lasted every little bit helps.
    Right so we could trade him somewhere and it helps a little bit.

    Leave a comment:


  • Heatdreamer
    replied
    Flynn salary is 3.8 million for next year, a minimum player or a veteran minimum of $1.7 Million still is a savings of $2.1 Million. As you stated lasted every little bit helps.
    Last edited by Heatdreamer; Mon Feb 13, 2023, 02:03 PM.

    Leave a comment:


  • DanH
    replied
    Heatdreamer wrote: View Post

    NBA as of October 22, 2022, projected the Luxury Tax for 2023/24 at $162 Million (8.3% increase), how does that change your above projections. How about not extending Flynn and find a backup SG, and let Scottie play backup PG.
    I am aware of the latest projections and they are what I am basing the above on.

    Flynn is locked in for next year. We could trade him but that shaves very little off, he'd need to be replaced with a minimum salary player which saves like a million if that.

    Leave a comment:


  • Heatdreamer
    replied
    DanH wrote: View Post
    Jak trade:

    Birch going out would have let them take back up to 11M or so since they are under the tax and low salary trades have more salary matching flexibility, so Poeltl easily fit in there. Increase still leaves them ~1.7M shy of the tax.

    Birch's salary coming off next year is important, as until we see what other deals happen, they could be looking at re-signing 3 key FA's.

    Mock scenario I came up with: waive Thad to save 7M, then you have 6 spots to fill. Set aside two minimum salaries and ~4M for a mid-1st rookie, and that leaves 61M for those three guys. If Jak is 20M per year, that's a starting salary of ~17.5M. If Gary is in the middle of the previously rumoured 20-25M AAV range, that would mean 19.4M starting salary on a long term deal. That would leave only 24.3M (4/110, 5/140) for Fred. Cap could go up a little, which would help. Or they trade Otto or Boucher to free up some cap. So, possible to keep them all together depending on how hot Fred's market is, if you can find ~5M somewhere, be it through cap rising, cheaper than expected deals for the other two FAs, or shedding another contract.

    Still, much cleaner to trade one of the expiring guards.
    NBA as of October 22, 2022, projected the Luxury Tax for 2023/24 at $162 Million (8.3% increase), how does that change your above projections. How about not extending Flynn and find a backup SG, and let Scottie play backup PG.
    Last edited by Heatdreamer; Mon Feb 13, 2023, 10:57 AM.

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  • DanH
    replied
    Jak trade:

    Birch going out would have let them take back up to 11M or so since they are under the tax and low salary trades have more salary matching flexibility, so Poeltl easily fit in there. Increase still leaves them ~1.7M shy of the tax.

    Birch's salary coming off next year is important, as until we see what other deals happen, they could be looking at re-signing 3 key FA's.

    Mock scenario I came up with: waive Thad to save 7M, then you have 6 spots to fill. Set aside two minimum salaries and ~4M for a mid-1st rookie, and that leaves 61M for those three guys. If Jak is 20M per year, that's a starting salary of ~17.5M. If Gary is in the middle of the previously rumoured 20-25M AAV range, that would mean 19.4M starting salary on a long term deal. That would leave only 24.3M (4/110, 5/140) for Fred. Cap could go up a little, which would help. Or they trade Otto or Boucher to free up some cap. So, possible to keep them all together depending on how hot Fred's market is, if you can find ~5M somewhere, be it through cap rising, cheaper than expected deals for the other two FAs, or shedding another contract.

    Still, much cleaner to trade one of the expiring guards.

    Leave a comment:


  • DanH
    replied
    Bonus Jonas wrote: View Post
    Don’t see us being a bottom 5 team no matter what this season if Siakam/Barnes/OG are playing. Those 3 alone are enough talent to win you a few games and we’d end up in the 6-10 range I think
    Well, as we've seen, the 6-10 range you have a decent shot at jumping up. But there are a lot of teams grouped closely together in that 6-10 range, so it wouldn't take much to slip up to the 11-14 range, which is where you don't want to be, really.

    Leave a comment:


  • Bonus Jonas
    replied
    Don’t see us being a bottom 5 team no matter what this season if Siakam/Barnes/OG are playing. Those 3 alone are enough talent to win you a few games and we’d end up in the 6-10 range I think

    Leave a comment:


  • DanH
    replied
    big boi wrote: View Post

    I missed a month of basketball, so I haven't seen what's happened with the gameplay until recently, but given that we're currently sitting 6th last in the league, have Fred and Gary on expiring contracts (of team control - player option), isn't there something to be said for trading Fred and Gary for the best package of value possible, which would probably ensure that we'd have a top 5-10 pick in what appears to be a very good draft class?
    Sure. There's also something to be said for keeping talent when you have it. For that reason I suspect the more likely outcome is trading one of the two to avoid concurrent salary negotiations that could drive us into the tax, but keep the other.

    As for the high pick, if they want to go that direction, there are ways to do that without trading the talent off the team. Fred for example is clearly hurt to some degree and could be shut down for a long while, and if Trent were traded and Fred sitting, the lack of shooting would pretty much guarantee a lot more losses even if some other factors brought our actual wins back up to near our expected wins (our point differential is still that of a ~.500 team). Meaning we have a bunch of teams right in front of us that we will naturally expect to play worse than us going forward, so even if we actively try to get worse, we'll be in a footrace and getting into the top 5 pick range is no guarantee.

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  • big boi
    replied
    DanH wrote: View Post

    Well, after this recent performance from Fred it sure seems like even that 4/114 is hardly a guarantee. Have to see how the rest of the season goes, but that offer might not even be on the table right now from the Raps. Fred has hardly been a free agency darling before so they could get lucky with the market (similar logic suggests his trade value is likely not where they'd like it if they were to move him).

    Gary I have no idea how to project. He's dropped off from last season in his impact stats, and his raw stats are hardly eye popping.

    In any case, I think the decision might be more about the team construct rather than the salary situation at this point - no idea where Masai and Bobby's heads are at, but they might not be interested in keeping this core together anyway (even if there are some no brainer keepers in Pascal, OG and Scottie).
    I missed a month of basketball, so I haven't seen what's happened with the gameplay until recently, but given that we're currently sitting 6th last in the league, have Fred and Gary on expiring contracts (of team control - player option), isn't there something to be said for trading Fred and Gary for the best package of value possible, which would probably ensure that we'd have a top 5-10 pick in what appears to be a very good draft class?

    Leave a comment:


  • DanH
    replied
    Bonus Jonas wrote: View Post

    Yeah definitely seems like the asking price for those two is the main thing. Fred we know is gonna be higher than 4/114 or he would’ve signed by now and Gary it’s just wide open
    Well, after this recent performance from Fred it sure seems like even that 4/114 is hardly a guarantee. Have to see how the rest of the season goes, but that offer might not even be on the table right now from the Raps. Fred has hardly been a free agency darling before so they could get lucky with the market (similar logic suggests his trade value is likely not where they'd like it if they were to move him).

    Gary I have no idea how to project. He's dropped off from last season in his impact stats, and his raw stats are hardly eye popping.

    In any case, I think the decision might be more about the team construct rather than the salary situation at this point - no idea where Masai and Bobby's heads are at, but they might not be interested in keeping this core together anyway (even if there are some no brainer keepers in Pascal, OG and Scottie).

    Leave a comment:


  • Bonus Jonas
    replied
    DanH wrote: View Post

    It's quite likely, IMO. But hardly a guarantee. Could definitely see them trading one or the other if they are concerned their ask will be too high and they'll end up too close to the tax.
    Yeah definitely seems like the asking price for those two is the main thing. Fred we know is gonna be higher than 4/114 or he would’ve signed by now and Gary it’s just wide open

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  • DanH
    replied
    Bonus Jonas wrote: View Post
    Re-signing both Fred and Gary and continuing to accumulate assets seems like the most logical outcome then it seems
    It's quite likely, IMO. But hardly a guarantee. Could definitely see them trading one or the other if they are concerned their ask will be too high and they'll end up too close to the tax.

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  • Bonus Jonas
    replied
    Re-signing both Fred and Gary and continuing to accumulate assets seems like the most logical outcome then it seems

    Leave a comment:

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