Trade & Free Agency 2026/2027

[Winter]

I've been thinking through consolidation trades with the losers of the Lebron 'sweepstakes'.  Now that our TPE is mostly gone and we are fairly close to the tax, I don't see eating a contract as a possibility.  We could trade a player straight up for another player (like Klay for Jovic or Strus), but the addition of Risacher makes our unlikely interest in Jovic even less than it might have been before.

GSW is the one I came up with.  People have proposed this before, but Gafford, PJ and Klay for Butler and Podz works legally and gets us back to 15 players.  It also gets us the additional creation we need and it helps GSW fill several needs for the rest of the Curry window with no Butler and no Lebron.  

The issue I see is Dallas would be a taxpayer.  We would still be nicely under the first apron (at which they would be hard-capped).  But, moving on from Gafford and Washington would completely reset the books going forward.  It 'could' create $60mm of cap space, but once you bring back Kyrie, Max and Naji, the space would be gone and you'd basically be operating under the tax and would use next season as your repeater reset instead of this season.  Besides the full MLE, we might also gain some benefit from having Butler's Bird rights next summer.  It worked with Middleton.

Podz/Larry/Sasser
Irving/Christie/Biberovic
Risacher/Naji/(Butler)
Flagg/Aldama/Martin
Morez/Lively/Cisse

That's a more balanced roster for sure. 

How does GS feel about Butler? I don't hear much about that. I can see why they might do that...  and I can see why the Mavs would do that (which likely means it would never happen). Butler certainly won't be happy in a crowded field of players, but we only have that problem for a year.