I know some people have been saying we have to spend and get a player in here or we lose cap space for a max player. Well this isn't so. Next year players under contract currently would equal under 60 million and only three guys on roster are coming up that may need there resigning. Their cap holds are
IT=9.4 million, Smart= 11 million, AB= 13 million
If cap is 101 million and teams under contract players equal 60 million you can clearly see there is another year of trying by renouncing one of the three (AB) and putting out the QO for Smart there is plenty of cap space. Now can we drop this excuse for having to spend this year if team doesn't get Hayward.
You're off on these cap holds. Smart's cap hold is $13.5 million. IT is $11.9 million. AB is $13.2 million (you were close on that one). I assume you're counting next year's first in this total, and dropping Mickey and Jackson to get to this total to get to $60 million, which is about right. That gets you to seven players. However, you also have to account for roster holds for not having enough player under contract or as cap holds.. If you let AB and Smart walk, and keep Yabusele and our own pick overseas, and we don't get the Lakers pick, that leaves us with 8 players:
Horford
IT
Tatum
Brown
Crowder
Zizic
Rozier
Brooklyn pick
That means we have an $11.9 million cap hold for IT and a $3.4 million cap hold for the four roster spots we're short, or $15.3 million in cap holds. If you add that to $60 million, we're now up over $75 million, still $3 million short of a max. The only way we could get the extra $30.6 million would be to trade one of Horford, Brown, Tatum, and Crowder. Could we do it? Sure. Would it be a less attractive roster for a free agent to join than this year's? Yes.
I doubt Jae Crowder is the deal break for any free agent especially with Brown and Tatum continuing to improve. (Hopefully)
No, but losing all three of Crowder, AB, and Smart likely is. I'm excited for Tatum, but he's not going to be a free agent draw after his rookie year unless he's a borderline all-star. Max free agents who are signing their third contract aren't really interested in your rookies -- at least not the Tier A class of free agent that we theoretically want. And all this assumes that the Celtics are going to in fact just sit on their tails if Hayward walks and not take on any more long-term money this offseason, which is a pretty aggressive assumption.