2025-26 Team Developments: Trades / Free Agents / News / Rumors / Ideas

We are projected to have about 48 mil in cap room, with Reaves 20.9M cap hold, Hayes 6.5M cap hold, Ayton likely opting in, and Smart likely opting out. If we operate under the cap, we could sign Lebron for 20M, Rui for 15M, Smart for 14.3M, and all of the money would be gone. A free agent like an Ellis or Thybulle could then be signed with the 9.4M Room exception.

We could technically sign-and-trade Reaves to Utah for Reaves. People here have been very critical of this idea. But, it could be a thing. Especially with AR's value dropping. Kessler could bolster the defense, and help make up for weak perimeter defender like Luka, Lebron, and Rui. In this scenario, we keep the aforementioned players and ad the room exception player.

If we renounced Reaves, we could actually combine that 20.9 additional cap-room with Smart's 14.3 million, and pay Watson a descending deal that starts at 35.2 million. At that point, either Smart or Rui could take the Room exception.

Basically in this scenario, we essentially swap Reaves and a room exception like Ellis or Thybulle for Watson. We probably have better options than that, and it might not be the best asset management. Basically replacing Austin and an Ellis or Thybulle with Watson, that's the crux of it.

If we could get Keyshawn, that would be great. I'm not sure what Washington would want for him though. I wouldn't want AD back. He's toxic Imo. IDK about Cam, KD, Zion.

 

I can't see a scenario where we don't resign Reaves to 35m or above. That's a 15% discount down to 205m over 5 years as opposed to the 240m he could get.

I think thats still valuable for a guy like him, it puts him more in line with very high end role players like OG compared to true max players that are getting in that 55-60m range and still leaves him as a valuable contract if we need to trade him.

I'll see how I feel after this series is over, but I'm generally encouraged after game 1. So much so, that I'm maybe leaning towards being an over the cap team and seeing if we can build over the next 2 offseasons and trade deadlines instead of hoping we just build it all in one go. Something like:

Luka: 49.5
Reaves: 35
Lebron: 20
Rui: 20 (4 year deal with 4th year team option)
Smart: 15.1 (3 year MLE)
Kennard: 13.2 (120% non bird raise)
Vando: 12.4
Ayton: 9.7 (120% non bird raise)
Hayes: 6.5 (2 year deal)
Jake: 6
Knecht: 4.2
Kleber: 2.5
NSJ: 2.5
Bronny: 2.3
Adou: 2.1

That's effectively 201m, which leaves us around 8m below the first apron. It means we can do a trade and take back an extra 7.5m in salary than going out.

We need to look at packaging some form of Vando, Knecht, Jake and NSJ in a trade to improve. In the lowest end, just trading Knecht gets us 11.7m in returning salary where as trading all 4 gets us up to 33m. The most likely is Vando & Knecht going out, which puts us at 24.1m in returning salary. Go get Josh Hart...

Luka / Kennard / Bronny
Reaves / Smart / NSJ
Hart / Adou / Jake
Lebron / Rui
Ayton / Hayes / Kleber

We add a 3&D hustle player in Hart and we bank on developing Adou for that wing role. That's the major additions to this team. Not sure what you guys think a healthy Luka, addition in Hart and a more developed Adou does for our chances against OKC & Spurs next season?

Lots of stuff will happen over the offseason with numerous teams probably blowing things up. So who knows what will happen.