Well it looks like Utah doesn't have the firepower to make the playoffs and we won't have a pick in the draft.

2012-13 salary cap: approx. $58 million
Wolves payroll: $59.6 million committed to 11 players.

This number can be reduced to $50.2 million if/when Webster & Brad Miller are cut. That leaves us with approximately $8 million in cap room. I'm not even going to go into the "what if" scenario of using the amnesty on Darko, because I think Glen Taylor is too much of a cheapwad to do it. Simple mistakes by Kahn are really hurting us here, such as picking up Wayne Ellington's option. If he hadn't done that, we'd have an additional $2 million in cap space.

There are two different routes the team can take this offseason.


Route #1: Roll the Dice in Free Agency

This is the path they will most likely choose. There are not too many guys out there that fit with the age and make up of our team. Any big money signing is almost guaranteed to be a SG or SF, so that further decreases the pool of available players.

Out of our Price Range
-Eric Gordon: no chance
-Nic Batum: at $8 mil per year, Portland is about 99.9% likely to match

Obtainable Restricted Free Agents
-OJ Mayo: Nobody knows what Memphis would be willing to pay to keep Mayo. Would $8 million be able to get him? I think it could. The downside is that going after Mayo would tie up all of our cap space until Memphis decided whether to match the offer or not.
-Courtney Lee: last I saw was that the Rockets were more interested in keeping Lee and trying to trade Kevin Martin, so they would probably match a fair offer.
-Brandon Rush: Ditto for him. A modest offer would most likely be matched by Golden State, and we wouldn't want to overpay these guys because they aren't big enough difference makers.

Marginal Upgrades
-Jamal Crawford
-JR Smith
-Nick Young
-Shannon Brown
-Carlos Delfino
-Marco Belinelli

As you can see, it's slim pickings in free agency this year. The other guys who are available worth getting would never come here (Ray Allen, Jason Terry).

The good big men out there are all restricted free agents and aren't realistic targets. That should be the least of our concerns anyways.

There are some good players at PG available, but I don't see it as a priority. But considering Kahn's history, he will probably sign another PG to a 4 year deal and do nothing else.

Also keep in mind that if we go the free agency route, the rights to Beasley, Tolliver, and Randolph must be renounced to rid ourselves of their cap holds. Beas & AR probably wouldn't have been back anyways, but Tolliver quite possibly would be back on a cheap contract. Renouncing his rights means he would not be re-signed at all.


Route #2: Make a Trade

This is looking more and more like the smart move to make if we want this team to be a real playoff threat next season. It is much less likely to happen because Kahn lacks creativity and talent as a GM and Glen Taylor loves cap space like rednecks love pickup trucks with a Confederate flag in the back window.

There are a plethora of different things we could do here. Our main assets here are:

-Derrick Williams: our single best trade asset not named Love/Rubio/Pek
-Webster & Miller: $9 million of instant savings would appeal to a lot of teams
-JJ Barea: could appeal to a team in need of a PG and/or playoff teams and I would rather keep Ridnour
-Utah & Memphis pick: not overly valuable by themselves, but can be used to complete trades

When you look at them individually, they're not too impressive but when you start combining things together, that's when it gets interesting.

One possibility is trading for Andre Igoudala. Things in Philly aren't as feel good as they were in the beginning of the season. They have dropped to 7th place in the East and there is friction between Doug Collins and some of the players.

I think this will be the year they do a mini-rebuild like Portland is doing and try to get younger. They already have some good young players like Holiday, Turner, Young, and Vucevic. Then there is Lou Williams, Jodie Meeks, and Spencer Hawes who can all become free agents, so I think freeing up some money would be very appealing to them.

We could do D-Will + Miller/Webster for Iggy, or D-Will + Miller/Webster + Ellington, or D-Will + Miller/Webster + Darko. The possibilities are endless.

There are tons of other trades that can be made. You could combine all our assets into one huge super trade or do a small trade as well. For instance with a team looking to shed salaries like the Nets, we could do Webster & Utah/Memphis pick for Anthony Morrow and Johan Petro. Or something along those lines.

The best part about making a trade is that we can still upgrade through free agency. Let's say we trade D-Will, Webster, and Wayne Ellington for Igoudala. We then cut Brad Miller. That would leave us at about $57.5 million committed to 9 players. Under this option, we would then be able to re-sign Tolliver, and being over the cap, would have the exceptions available to us. Mid-level, the new mini Mid-level, etc. So not only can we get a significant upgrade at wing with a player like Iggy, we'd also be able to a SG such as Jamal Crawford or Shannon Brown. As a guy of this caliber wouldn't use up the full mid-level exception, we'd still have money to pick up a 3rd PG and some more depth at PF/C and have something we haven't had in a long, long time: a balanced roster.

PG: Rubio, Ridnour
SG: FA, Barea, Lee
SF: (Iggy or other trade target), Wes
PF: Love, Tolliver
C: Pek, Darko

There are a ton of decent bargain bench players out there, so finding depth at PG, wing, and PF/C should be no problem. Any remaining roster spots can be filled by our 2nd round pick and/or minimum salary guys. Sadly I think something like this is way beyond Kahn's capabilities. We can only hope that Glen has second thoughs about re-upping Kahn's contract and either Adelman is making the decisions, or they hire someone who knows what he's doing.

Good stuff. And it's depressingly accurate, imo.

There is no *REAL* hope for this franchise while Kahn is still around. He is godawful and an idiot. We won games the first half of this season in spite of him. Hell, we should have won 10+ more games before Rubio got hurt, but our roster is just so terribly constructed. It's sad, really.

I don't really expect anything from him in free agency. Partly because Taylor is a cheapass, but mostly because he's an incompetent judge of talent. I am sure they'll feed us the usual BS about how we'll "improve organically" with a full training camp; and that there are still more opportunities down the road to improve the team later. Rinse, wash, and repeat. Puke.

And then in 3 years K-Lav is going to opt out, because we'll be treading our wheels until then. After he leaves for no compensation, it's back to square 1. Actually, we'll be even worse off than when KG was traded, because we won't have another K-Lav in the pipeline, and no nice draft picks either.

So yeah, low expectations for our organization... but seriously, this is pretty damn realistic if you ask me.

Solid assessment of the situation.

Derrick Williams is sadly the only major trade asset we have. That is not a good thing. And to make matters worse, tons of teams have cap room. The Wolves are neither buyers nor sellers because Kahn has wasted just about every opportunity he has had to make a significant upgrade to the team.

Re: Miller and Webster. Miller is retiring, so doesn't that mean he waives the last year of his contract regardless, making it untradeable? I'm not sure here. And with Webster, doesn't the team have to decide on the option before free agency begins? Order of operations will probably affect how we can use those contracts through trade. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Crawford has been linked to the Wolves for months. I would be pretty surprised if that mutual interest didn't continue this offseason.

Also, draft picks, I believe we have OKC's 2nd rounder thanks to Kahn's blockbuster Lazar Hayward trade! % chance it's used on a Euro who will a) never play here, b) not even be aware the Wolves own his rights? 80-90%?

WallyWorld wrote:
Look, we have Love, Rubio, Pekovic, Ridnour, Williams, then everyone else. Probably our two conditional first round picks, then Barea, Webster, Johnson, Tolliver, Ellington, Lee and all the second rounders - something like that in that order of value.

What you are really saying is the top 3 guys are untouchable.

I guess I get that but wouldn't trading Pekovic be appealing if we could somehow wrangle two position players out of it? Something like Hawes + Iguodala for Pekovic, Williams, and Webster or something.

I'm not advocating that particular trade, but just saying that just because we don't want to trade someone doesn't mean they are not an asset. I like Pek and would want to keep him, but if, say, Orlando called and said "this whole Dwight Howard thing isn't working out..."

Yeah definitely a fair call on Pek. I suppose he should be added to the list of guys to trade if something came up.

But honestly? In a ho-hum game with all players healthy, considering fit and what lead the team to be successful this year...I think Pek might be more valuable to this team than Iggy would be.

FANTASTIC post Roundhouse. Howl.

I feel like nationally people don't know how good Peck is. I would bet that D-Will has a much higher trade value than Peck, even though Peck is easily now the better pro, and I feel will continue to be.

I found this to be the depressing part of the thread:
Marginal Upgrades
-Jamal Crawford
-JR Smith
-Nick Young
-Shannon Brown
-Carlos Delfino
-Marco Belinelli

Other than Jamal Crawford, I'll pass on those other guys. I am really high on Mayo though, and Rush & Lee to a lessor degree.

Great job RH.

The real culprit here is Taylor. As usual, his ineptitude is slept on.

daddyfatsax wrote: Astute point.

WallyWorld wrote:
According to shamsports, the dates that they need to be cut by are July 1st for Webster and June 30th for Miller. So there is plenty of time to trade them. It wouldn't be a big deal for Miller to hold off signing his retirement papers until then as a favor to Adelman. They are good friends. In the grand scheme of things it doesn't affect Miller either way.

I didn't put Pek on the asset list because I don't think there is much of a chance he'll be traded. A productive player on a rookie size contract that fans love is a Glen Taylor wet dream.

roundhouse wrote:
Agreed- and my point was more directed at WW's post than yours. I think you hit where we really are pretty well.

My point is that, if trading for Iguodala or someone like that really is "our missing piece" then Pek should be on the table, although whether he would be in real life or not is a different subject.

If this forum is about what is most likely to happen, I'd say we go into next year with the same roster, probably without Beasley and Randolph and with a couple of other similar replacement level players, one notable but relatively unimportant free agent signing (of the Tolliver/Webster/Barea caliber), and a couple new second round draft picks or Euros.

What is most likely to happen is depressing and boring. What should or could happen is far more interesting.

wolfenstein wrote:
Story of our lives as TWolves fans...

After reading some of the stuff posted around the league, it seems to me like Gerald Henderson is not off limits. I mean, in terms of guys that the Bobcats are committed to building around, is he #3? #4? Biyombo, Walker, then maybe Augustin or Henderson? They are so bad that surely a pile of draft picks would be appealing to Michael Jordan's cheapness desire to build a winner from the ground up.

If we could get him for something like Ellington plus 2 2nd rounders or something I would do it in a heartbeat. He's like the more mature version of what Malcolm Lee will be in a couple years. Good fit, in my opinion- defensive 2 guard with ball handling and decent scoring skills, can cover the point if need be. Young, still on rook scale.

What about that? Man I'm glad I'm not GM, I would have traded Derrick Williams for Henderson mid-season when Williams was dunking 3 times a game from Ricky and that's all. Choke.

Also, I totally disagree about GSW matching on Brandon Rush. They've already turned the keys over to Klay Thomson, there's literally no reason they would match a $4-5 million/year offer for someone they see as a bench player, in my opinion. Rush would be the fourth decent FA signing by Kahn after Ridnour, Tolliver, and Barea.

But you're probably right that Mayo, Gordon, Batum, etc. are out of the question.

wolfenstein wrote: Ehhhhh, well you wouldn't have extracted maximum trade "value" from D-Charge (being he was the #2 overall pick), but at least Henderson would fit waaaaay better on our team than Williams does...