Here take my hand...
...1. We were not paying IT $35 mil a year and 2. He's 29 going on 30 coming off a hip injury. and 3. Kyrie is 25 and not even in his prime yet.
Welcome back.
1. That's true, mostly because the max he can get will be 30% of the cap and the cap isn't rising to $116 million next year. He literally can't get $35 million per year
2. He's 28 and turns 29 in February. That is not "29 going on 30"
3. No arguments there
You are one of the cap kings around here so you should know better, BJ.
Just based on this year's $99M cap, a player in the 7-9 year range signing a 5 year max contract with 8% raises would make a total of just over $172M over the course of that contract ($34.4M/yr). There just needs to be a $1M increase in the cap next year for IT to sign a $35M/yr contract.
Personally, I don't think Danny was ever going to sign IT to the max and I don't think Cleveland will either. Cleveland will give it one big last shot this year and then immediately look to rebuild with a prime pick. That is [unfortunately] why the price was so high. I know I was wrong about what we had to give up (overrating IT's value, underrating Kyrie's 'trade demand' value).
He's not signing a 5 year max deal, though. I don't think there was even a chance of getting it from us (3 year max at most, 4 or 5 years only at a discount), and there's definitely no chance he gets it in CLE or elsewhere. A 3 year deal puts him at ~$97.5 million over three years (assuming a modest cap raise next year, which seems likely). But even then 1st year cap hit is what we really need to worry about as far as resigning Smart goes (which should be the only concern this summer since we have no cap space no matter what. And 2019 Morris comes off the cap sheet, which lightens the lead a bit, and 2020 Horford and Hayward should come off)
How did this trade affect our cap room? Did we bring in more salary with the Irving acquisition? I'm assuming so since Cleveland supposedly saved a bunch in luxury tax.
We have no cap room and will not have cap room for the foreseeable future unless a trade happens.
The Irving trade added a few million in 2017-18 salary, but it also alleviated some in 2018-19 and forward because we no longer have the 2018 Nets pick, which probably would have cost 4-7M per. Of course, we won't have that draft pick and will have someone else instead in that roster slot so how much that saves isn't clear.
Our current salary schedule looks roughly like so:
2017-18: 111.5M 15 players with guaranteed contracts, 1 more with non-guaranteed.
2018-19: 107.4M 9 players guaranteed, 2 team options (Brown 5.1M & Rozier 3.0M), Smart & Baynes will be free agents.
2019-20: 105.9M 5 players guaranteed, Al Horford likely to opt-in on 30M, Irving likely to opt-out on 21.3M, 3 team options (Tatum 7.8M, Brown 6.5M, Yabu 3.1M. Morris, Rozier & Theis will be FAs.
The salary totals are committed money for the players noted. We obviously have to field more players than currently contracted in the future years so the actual numbers will be much higher.
Assuming the team opts-in on Brown & Rozier, and given that we still have two first round picks in 2018, any contract for Smart over about 13M probably puts us over the tax threshold for that year.
And you have to add that contract plus the ones for the two picks to the salary number for 2019-20 so that is also likely close to or over the tax threshold ... and then you add another ~10M or so for Kyrie's likely salary bump on a new contract. So plan on being way over the tax threshold in 2019-20.
In 2020, Horford's contract comes off the books. He either takes a pay cut or walks at that point in his career, so you get some salary relief. But two things could dramatically affect the budget in that year. (1) Hayward will have a player option on his 34M salary and (2) Jaylen will be a Restricted Free Agent.
If we don't sign Smart, then we can slip under the luxury tax through 2018-19. But we'll probably go over regardless in 2019-20, at least for that one year.