Imho, the weakest position on the team is the center position. At PF we have MO/KT/Griffin, at the SF we have Griffin/Langhi/T-Mo/Walt, & at the Guards we have Francis/Mobley/Moochie/Shandon or Colson(?). Without Dream, we have Collier/Cato at the center position. If Dream or Shandon is unreasonable with their salary demands, we might have to look elsewhere for a replacement center. Some possible replacements that we might have a chance of acquiring are: Marc Jackson/Brad Miller/Nazr Mohammed/Raef LaFrentz/Calvin Booth/Evan Eschmeyer/Todd MacCulloch/Jelani McCoy/Patrick Ewing/Bryant Reeves(just kidding ) & possibly several others that we could trade for. According to RealGM, we have Francis/Mobley/Langhi/Walt/KT/Cato/Collier/Maloney under contract for $24,122,987. That would leave us with approximately $18,877,013 (assuming a $43 mill cap) available to resign our FA's, draft picks, & any other deals we might make. Our FA's are Moochie/Colson/Shandon/Bullard/MO/Dream. At least one of these players won't be back next year. If we resign Shandon, my guess would be Colson. Our Rookies are Griffin/T-Mo. Griffin will get $1,603,000 & I assume that T-Mo will get approximately $500,000. That would drop our available cap space down to $16,744,013. If our FA's resign for approximately these salaries: Moochie: $1.5 mill Shandon: $5.0 mill Bullard: $1.1 mill MO: $6.0 mill That would leave only $3,174,013 to resign Dream. However, if we do some creative juggling, we could bump that amount up. We'd have to sign Moochie/Bullard/T-Mo after all the other deals have been done first, which would give us an extra $2,471,800 for a total of $5,645,813 to offer Dream. If Shandon would accept the Early Bird(which is in doubt) for approximately $5 mill, we could bump Dreams offer to about $7 mill. We'd have to resign Dream first, then MO, & then the rest, which would put us a little over the cap. Our total salary would be approximately $46,825,987. From what I've picked up, the Luxury Tax will kick in at about $10 mill above the salary cap, so Les won't have to worry about that this year. That'd give us a lineup of: C: Dream/Collier/Cato PF: MO/KT/Griffin SF: Griffin/Langhi/Bull/T-Mo/Walt SG: Mobley/Shandon PG: Francis/Moochie Obviously, 2 of these players will have to go on the IR. Maybe we could trade Walt for Brad Miller straight up & put Cato on the IR for about 5 years & forget about him. It's a shame that Chicago got Curry/Chandler in the draft. I can't think of another sucker, uhhh... I mean trading partner, that we could convince to take Cato off our hands. Assuming that Dream stays healthy & with the addition of Griffin, I could see this team winning 60 or more games this year. Any thoughts? ------------------
Shandon is not worth more than the early bird, so if he wants more than that then he has to play for the bulls. Dream is more important since Cato and Collier isn't going to cut it in the west. ------------------
