Trade & FA 2023-24: Stein-Ingram Trade Inevitable| LAL Want Lebron Back On Any Terms

[DanSchwartzgan]

1 If his contract is "as is," CP3 counts 15.8 for PHX, but 30.8 for ATL. I assume it's in June, to avoid the issues of CP3 g'tee and new Apron 1 rules for all 3 teams.
2 The match doesn't work for ATL (39.8 incoming, but only 23.5 outgoing). ATL has to offload salary somewhere else (about 8.5M of it to team 4) to make it work.
3  I certainly wouldn't do Maxi-THJ-10 for Ayton-15, but it feels like about what PHX would be asking. I at least make PHX also take Javale, which is then a salary wash for DAL in yr 1.

Thanks for the reminder regarding #1.  

Atlanta doesn't really have much 'bad' salary, so it is difficult to make this make sense for them if they have to add outgoing salary.  You could pull Maxi out of the deal, but then they are just doing a pick swap and paying Paul $15.8mm to do nothing instead of paying Collins $78mm to do something.  Even then, Atlanta has to add a small salary to the deal.  

The Atlanta part of this was the shakiest part of what I proposed and it probably doesn't work without Maxi.  The rumors for Collins back at the TDL were Crowder/Shamet in a deal with Phoenix (this was apparently ready to go until Ishba stepped in).  There was also a Vanderbilt/Beasley deal on the table before the pair went to the Lakers.  This is reporting from Michael Scotto and part of what kept either of these from happening was the pick compensation Atlanta was to receive (all of this happening before details of the new CBA were released).

So, I don't think Maxi, a ton of savings in the out years and the pick swap is outrageous.  But asking Atlanta to add a body makes this much tougher to swallow.