ROSTER TALK: Mavs favs for Vogel if no HC job exists. Kyrie handshake deal?

[F Gump]

Good insight.  Specifically they have $165mm tied up in seven players and only $15mm to build out the rest of the roster (including at least one starter).  Paul and Payne are partially guaranteed, but you absolutely have to replace them in any plan to not pay their guaranteed amount. 

Something definitely has to change in PHX, you would think.

They have seemed to indicate they will keep Paul, and Payne is cheap enough that it seems unlikely they would waive him to save money (it would only give them $2.5M more in room against the 2nd apron to do so, which doesn't seem worth it for a guy who's giving about 1000 minutes of decent and fairly reliable backup play for only $6.5M).

But with what they have right now, they are already stuck, if they want to stay under apron 2, because the 7 players they have plus ALL minimums lands them over the apron with a 15 man roster. They could only have 14, and be about $1M under apron 2, but there's no flexibility at all.

I do wonder if they will simply bust the 2nd apron and bite the bullet. They need to re-sign some of their FAs to even have a rotation (Warren, Craig, Landale, Okogie, Biyombo might all be seen as way more preferable to them than min salary FAs).

Even if they do, it sure feels like they will feel compelled to slice a big chunk of salary somewhere, and Ayton sure makes the most sense.

But I'm not sure the Mavs work. PHX would be looking for a pile of immediate cap salary savings in such a deal, and Mavs don't seem to be that guy (unless Mavs could slice Ayton up into smaller chunks, then PHX finds a taker for one of those smaller pieces). Like the rest of you, I land at THJ, Bullock, McGee as the most I would want to offer, and am leery of the value for DAL in light of that big contract on a guy whose motor is questionable and is perhaps a bit of a dinosaur in today's game.

That deal lands DAL here:

C -  Ayton
PF - Kleber
SF - Green
SG - Luka, Hardy
PG - Kyrie
The rest = pick 10, MLE, BAE, and 6 minimums to fill a whole lot of holes. That assumes Kyrie at same salary as Luka, and s-w Bertans, and it leaves about 2M cap room under Apron 1.