Salary Cap & Offseason Plan (Pipe Dream)

Okay so I took a look at next seasons salary cap and did some number crunching and came up with some interesting possibilities.

First, I know a lot of people give Ernie grief for not amnestying Rashard, but upon further inspection, I think it was a GREAT move. By not using the amnesty this year, we allow ourselves flexibility for next year. Specifically, reports are that Blatche has been on the trading block for some time now with no takers. Well Blatche is owed over 23 million in the next three years (not including this season). If he continues to show poor attitude (we all know he will step it up the last 20 or so games to tease us again) or doesnt show much more improvement, we could amnesty him. Only about 10 million of Rashards contract is guaranteed for next season, for which we have two options. Trade for an asset from a cost cutting/rebuilding team; or buy his contract out. I think buying him out would be the most likely option, and if we do so, the maximum we will have to pay him is 10 mil (and this amount could be lowered through negotiation, as its highly unlikely rashard wants to waste his time on a rebuilding team and he would want to join a contender).

So where does this leave us? If we amnesty blatche, and buy out rashard, we trim almost 30 million off our cap commitments. That would leave us at $28,682,904 in salary. We can assume the salary cap will be roughly around what it was this year at 58 million, which would leave us with almost 30 million dollars to spend not including additional exceptions. However, we will more than likely end up with a top 5 pick which we will assume to have a 5 million hold (the amount it was for this years number one pick, and if we don't get the number one pick it would be less) which would put us at 25 million to spend. We could then get an additional 3.5 million by not tendering mcgee which would leave us with 28.5 million to spend and almost room for two max contracts.

Why would we not tender mcgee? Well this scenario only exists, if we can be aggressive and try to convince dwight to join our team. It's looking like the Magic will not trade him, and hope they can convince him to stay. There is only one other free agent worth max money, and that would be deron williams. We could then offer deron williams the second max in hopes of shifting him to SG on offense. This would be a set up similar to what the clippers employ now with billups and cp3. Deron is a big guard who is also a good shooter, and I think has the potential to play off the ball. On defense we could even have wall play SG because supposedly he is closer to 6'5 now because over the summer flip said it seems like he grew an inch. Wall also seems to have trouble with the real quick point guards and SG's may be a better matchup for him.

We then still have a top 5 pick who we could use to get a SG/SF (Lamb), or a pf (a. davis, sullinger, drummond, T robinson, moultrie who is a very good rebounder and shooter from the PF position). Then we still have singleton and vesely to man the 3/4 positions as well and j. craw to play back SG.

Finally, we could fill out the rest of our team using exceptions. Again, this is one scenario, and there are still many others. Like we could get dwight, and then spend the remaining money to acquire/sign solid SG, or PF. Regardless I think buying out Lewis and cutting blatch will be the way the team goes at the end of the season. I dont think it would be wise to put Wall through another rebuilding season, and we need to surround him with some pieces.

Regardless, this offseason will be an interesting one. What direction would you like to see the wizards go?

Discuss!