I, unlike many internet GM’s, don’t believe a team trying to win a championship should just dump a starting-caliber role player for nothing just to get under the tax. I rather have him ride pine all playoffs than have to turn to Semi or Yabu in a big spot.
If we stretch Nader, we are still about $1.67M above the tax for 14 players, not including Bird.
Salary dumping Yabu would get us below, but I’m not sure what Bird’s number would be (under $1M keeps us under the tax), again for 14 players with zero salary to do anything during the season.
My guess is we stay put and become taxpayers, even for such a small amount. Then we have the $5.3M to play with during the season.
This is part of the issue actually. Seems a shame to start the repeater clock (which is what we want to avoid more than the actual tax this year) for such a small amount. Oddly, if we were way over then we might not be having this discussion.
While certainly it would be ideal to not be a tax team this year, it’s more ideal to put the best possible team forward when a legitimate title contender. If the tax is the price, and thus the repeater clock, so be it.
I've seen this point made by several people and in this case I do not think its the right way to approach this. First of all this team is gonna be good for a long time if we play it right, and to keep it together will require that repeater tax. So its not just the small payment this year thats the problem, its the fact you have to pay the higher rate a year earlier when you will likely be very expensive potentially result in 10's of millions of extra tax. Now if the owner shop is okay with that, then fine. But im skeptical, a historic tax payment which is possible is historic because it almost never happens. And before everybody says "owner shipping says they will pay" I get it, but pay and pay HUGE are different. If you can get under it makes too.much business sense not to.
And thats before you in factor in other things like playing time, a more limited role, not enough ball to go around and I think it makes even more sense to trade Morris. On top of all that, I think he is massively overated. This team was overall worse with him on the floor last year, his defense comes and goes, his offense is in efficient and he NEVER PASSES THE BALL. Even the idea of him as insurance is overated, because if injuries happen and you reach the point where Morris is a crítical part of your team next year, you arent winning it all.
Now that doesnt mean you have to trade him now. You can wait and see how the team is going before deciding. Maybe Semi steps up and makes him expendable. Maybe the rotation shakes out such that he doesnt get a lot of playing time and you just dont need him. Maybe injuries happen and Ainge decides he does need him. But I think trading Morris is an obvious move.
Of course I am often wrong.