05-06-2026, 02:47 AM
(05-05-2026, 01:52 PM)Smitty Wrote: Yeah. The Caruso angle has been talked about a lot already. OKC has a financial crunch and very little need for 2-3 more rookie first rounders outside the lottery.
The Cleveland one is the Lebron rumor. They are also dealing with Apron issues and may want to add Lebron to the mix as well.
Pick #29 doesn't move me all that much, but I'd probably do it for an expiring Strus. Try to package 29 & 30 to move up and secure my guy. Which for me would be I. Evans, but it could be any number of guys they deem worthy of going up for.
Raptors will be up against the Tax and stuck with their current team. Sending #19 and a future first gives them a lot more current and future flexibility. There's the Masai connection there also. Mavs do it to get more assets..
I'd need to dive into the DET and CHA ones more. Idk why those two stood out to me at first glance.
I think FRPs have become far to valuable to be used in pure salary dumps. I don't remember last time I saw it, other than Holmes example Dan posted. And Holmes was extremely bad salary, not elite role player like Caruso. Example of a more realistic "salary dump" could be Denver with MPJ for Cam Johnson trade. That trade reduced their payroll a lot while bringing in what seemed to be a similar level of player (turned out MPJ was actually better).
Denver is a team that might be looking at some heavy shaking up. They are above the first apron and Peyton Watson (whom they seem to want to resign) might get offers at least in the Braun contract range, if not higher. THJ, Brown and Spencer Jones are also UFA and they were in the rotation. I really don't know what they will opt out to do. Cleanest way would be to dump Cam and resign Watson, but other things could be on the table too.
OKC will become very expensive, but I am not sure why they would consider paying a FRP to purely salary dump aynone. That is just not the way they operate and they have far cleaner ways to reduce salary. I am not sure if Caruso is really considered as a negative contract around the league. He is still an elite role player. That is not 60 mil of dead money that needs to be given away. More realistically it is someone trading for Caruso and them paying a cap space team (if they don't have the space themselves) to take the necessary salary. For example, Lakers have the cap space and would imho gladly take a player like Caruso in it as he is exactly what they need. OKC will imho solve their "problem" of having too many FRPs in this draft by pushing that assets either for trading up, or exchanging for picks in future drafts. I think they will draft one player they really like. The cleanest way for OKC to reduce salary is by not taking team options on Dort and Hartenstein, if there are no teams willing to simply trade for them in their cap space (Dort is another example Lakers would imho gladly take into their capspace and pay a little something like a pick swap to OKC).
I don't think Cleveland really needs a third team for LeBron. It would have to be a SnT (assuming LeBron doesn't want to play for minimum) in any case. If LeBron is put on that roster, one of Allen or Mobley becomes imho redundant. I think Lakers would gladly discuss any of the two putting assets on the table to make it happen. Even if Cleveland thinks they can make Allen-Mobley-LeBron work, they would need to dump more than just Strus (add Schroeder).