A little glimmer of optimism before I bail for the night and go watch Jerry Maguire....
When can free agents officially beginning signing with teams?
While team?s can negotiate with free agents starting July 1, they can not officially sign a contract until July 8. This is known as the ?July Moratorium? and is when the league reviews the revenue from the previous season and officially sets the salary cap.
For those that are staying up late waiting to see some big signing, just understand that today is only the beginning of the free agent negotiation period. Nobody can physically sign a contract until July 8th. So if what we're hearing is true about Boston targeting guys like Tobias Harris and Khris Middleton (both restricted free agents), they can't even physically sign a contract until July 8th... and then I think there's a 3 day period where their original team has the ability to match the offer (since those particular players are restricted).
To even put ourselves in that position, I think we need to renounce the rights to players like Brandon Bass so that we even have enough cap space to offer a contract to a guy like Harris.
So say Boston wants Harris... There's no real reason for Boston to announce that intention now. They'll just have to wait until the 8th, sign the contract and wait... and that will tie up our money in the process while we wait to see if Orlando matches. And then if they do, we try for Plan B...
But say we succeed in signing someone like Harris/Middleton and the original team inexplicably refuses to match... well now maybe we move onto another step which could potentially involve dumping Wallace's contract and finding another free agent. I mean... all sorts of stuff could take place.
In other words, this process will take some time. Go take a vacation for a couple weeks and come back to see where things stand. It's very unlikely you'll see anything major announced tonight. But there's no reason to freak out... yet.