Wood You Consider Spending Over the First Apron

[DanSchwartzgan]

So, here is what we know about the first apron (about $170mm) for the 23/24 season.  You are Hard Capped if you:

Use the non-TP MLE
Make a trade with > 10% trade spread
S&T an incoming player.

That makes the first apron the presumptive cap for the Mav’s UNLESS they can avoid doing any of those things.  The problem with avoiding all three is it is hard to imagine off-season upgrades that don’t either involve the MLE or a large trade package.

Quite often FG will talk about the MLE….OR…a Wood S&T.  It is hard to imagine the reasonable deal that allows for both.  But, if you didn’t use the MLE (the FA class is crap anyway) and could construct a deal that doesn’t exceed the 10% trade spread, $170mm is no longer your spending limit.  It is now $179.5mm.  The key is the flexibility of setting a Wood salary in an outgoing S&T if you can find a team that isn’t going to be over the first apron after the trade.

Keith Smith at Spotrac has Wood as the 4th most attractive FA at center.  I’ve seen various estimates elsewhere that he might be worth something in the $16mm-$17mm area.  All theoretical since so few teams can spend over the MLE (and many of those don’t need what Wood provides as they are bad because they are really bad at D).  So, a Wood S&T could be mutually beneficial to Wood and Dallas if we can find the right team.

We’ve spent a lot of time trying to design a deal for Allen.  Cleveland’s O is horrendous.  So is it’s TS%.  Wood could single handedly fix that.  He could start next to Mobley and either he or Mobley could play without the other (Mobley probably in closing lineups).  Depending on what it does with LaVert, Cleveland can take on salary in a trade AND use the MLE AND be well under the tax line.  We can mix and match all sorts of other things like Reggie and THJ and McGee and Okoru or Cedi, but at the core of all of this is Wood S&T for Allen and the Dallas 2027 (they aren’t giving up Allen without a big time asset coming back).

One benefit of such an approach would be that this can’t be done prior to 7/1.  So, Dallas can keep its pick.  A front court rotation of Allen/Powell with Maxi/Hendricks at PF is pretty darn strong.  If we have $179.5mm to spend, we don’t have to worry nearly as much about jettisoning salary in a draft day trade.  So, keeping #10 becomes much more likely if the rest of your summer is based around finding a deal for Wood and 2027.