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

[F Gump]

To your point here, I think the Toronto beat writer is out of touch on the market for a potential free agent who can walk for free.  Recent reporting seems to reflect that.  He's asking for two useful players and 3-4 assets.  I suspect the deal is closer to two useful players and one asset.  Or one useful player and one asset.  Teams who give up too many things will only have the MLE to replace what was traded away if things go poorly.  Any one of Green/2027/OMax would be painful.  Losing two plus two rotation players like GWill and THJ won't happen IMHO.

One other thing...I don't believe the writer is correct about Josh's PP causing a LT issue.  The trade machine counts his higher number in team salary.  I believe PP is just a trade matching mechanism and doesn't add to team salary for tax purposes.  Too lazy to look it up, but no one is being paid that salary, so it logically wouldn't count.

Thanks for saying all this, so I don't have to do it myself.

I think you're right on whether or not Josh's PP would cause TOR a LT issue. PP impacts trade matching, but not payroll and tax totals. And he does remind us that TOR is up against the tax line, just like DAL is, but as long as the salary totals going both ways are very close to the same, neither should go over the tax line.

I also agree the Dallas offer is a bit too rich, in light of the risk of Siakam as a FA. TOR is trying to get out from under that risk, so it's real. I would be in favor of the basic contour of the trade, but whittle down the extras. Something like this:

To Dallas: PS, 2027 SRP
To TOR: THJ, GWill, Green, 2026 FRP (contingent on 2024 conveying, protected 1-10, if either contingency pushes it out of 2026 then it becomes 2027 unprotected)

That leaves Dallas barely under the tax line, with 13 players, but with just enough room to use 1st year players to fill the slot (10-days, promote a 2-way, etc) and still remain tax-free.