How will it affect the team's salary cap if we trade for CP3? He has a 3 year max contract? If a trade is done, will we still have cap space for an outright max player next summer?

If the front office ends up signing VanVleet to a max contract this summer in the 20M/yr range. We will still have enough cap space next summer to try to sign a superstar next summer?

What is the path that is best to take? Get CP3, who has around 3 good years left in him while Thibs and CP3 grooms the point guard of the future in Frank or DSJ or this years 1st round pick? Will his presence be counter productive and will just stunt our young point guards' growth?

Or go with signing FVV, making him the point guard of the future?

Or sign a reasonably priced stop gap like Agustin or a short term deal for Dragic to really see what we already have at the point guard with one year of mentoring from Thibs of Frank, DSJ, or this year's 1st rounder?

Is Olynyk a free agent this year? If we don't retain Taj, Olynyk looks like a nice physical stretch big!

Jimbo5 wrote:How will it affect the team's salary cap if we trade for CP3?

On your basic cap questions, you can do your own math

https://www.spotrac.com/nba/new-york-knicks/cap/

On CP3, the critical issues would be the only incentive to do a trade would be

A) To get late first round picks

B) To make a move that is the best pathway to get to the cap floor ( i.e. get a useful, though expensive player, but who can be productive while getting draft assets)

Since CP3 is on a max deal, his contract will scale with changes in the cap. If the cap goes down, the salary floor goes down too. But no one is clear yet if the NBA will make some adjustments to the tax line. Where the tax line might be will be a factor in trade compensation for taking on CP3s contract.

Here's the other tricky issue - the owners and the NBPA just recently agreed to what amounts to a COVID19 insurance buyout for all players. The trick to this is it denotes COVID19 as "career ending" which takes a player immediately in line with Chris Bosh Rule, without many legal entanglements. Also its a way to forestall any potential future liability regarding how the league has handled the bubble.

In effect, the NBA owners have created a backdoor way to have a players contract continue to provide the cap hit ( to get the salary floor) but dramatically change the cash hit since a large portion of those dead contracts will be forced onto insurance. This would force any potential legal battle to shift from NBA owners to the embattled insurance carriers. Since major insurance carriers could implode with COVID19, it adds the possible benefit of leverage by the owners to break the NBPA over major leverage points.

I don't think most people are seeing what is happening with MLB, but the Astros situation and the COVID19 situation will look like a black eye upon the owners short term, but it also puts them in a position to break the MLBPA, the most powerful union in all of American sports.

COVID19 is sort of fascinating in that it has created the opportunity for NBA owners to engage in what amounts of open collusion.

As for guys like Joe Harris and FVV, the issues are that those players, and any FA, are looking for total compensation/length of deal, even if it's less than the max and even if it's a hit on their AAV. These guys are actually incentivized to not take the max. The current rumblings about FA is that the current CBA was never designed to account for COVID19. Teams will want an adjustment to the percentage cap of unlikely to be earned incentives in contracts. They'll also want some adjustments to the current stretch provision.

A complication for most other teams who are NOT cash rich, but have cap space is because of CP3's position with the NBPA, he can only reasonbly take a "1 for 1" buyout in his last season. Meaning there will be no cash savings in any buyout other than the standard pro rated off set against the veterans minimum once he clears waivers. This will shrink his already small trade market, making the compensation with CP3 appear to be more leveraged for the Knicks.

Long story short, should the Knicks trade for CP3? I'd say Yes if a couple of late first rounders came with him. Those picks would offer cost certainty in a situation where a lot of teams could be artificially getting to the league cap floor.

If I was John Wall, I'd basically buy a NASA astronaut suit and just ****ing hide. There are now like 15-20 major financial reasons for his franchise to intentionally infect him. I'm not saying they would, I am saying lots of people have done far worse for far far far less.