Yipee's 2009 Offseason Mock

[Yipee]

Free Agents-
Wally Szczerbiak(13M)
Joe Smith(1.2M)
Anderson Varejao(Player Option)(6M)
Lorenzen Wright(1.2M)
Jawad Williams(.275M)
Trey Johnson(.24M)

Retire-
Ben Wallace(14M)

After losing about half our team, our salaries add up to about $51m. The buyout for Ben Wallace should be about 4-5m but it won’t count against the salary cap. The Salary Cap for the 2009-2010 season should be around 58M(about the same as the 2008-2009 salary cap). So we will be about 7m under the cap. But we will have to forfeit our MLE.

Free Agents-
Lamar Odom to a 3 year deal worth 7M per Year
Jarron Collins to the Bi-Annual Exception(2.16M for 1 Year)

Lamar Odom gives us depth off the bench. He can play either SF or PF and has range out to the 3. Varejao signs after Odom because we can use our cap space to sign Odom.

Trades-
Cleveland Cavaliers trade PG Daniel Gibson, SF Sasha Pavlovic, PF J.J. Hickson, and cash considerations(3M) to the New Orleans Hornets for PF David West
Cleveland Cavaliers sign and trade Anderson Varejao(9M for 4 years) to the Minnesota Timberwolves for Mike Miller

Draft-
Buy #21 from New Orleans Hornets
Buy #34 from Denver Nuggets

#21- BJ Mullens, C, Ohio State
#30- DaJaun Summers, SF, Georgetown
#34- Danny Green, SF, North Carolina
#46- Milenko Tepic, PG/SG, Serbia

BJ Mullens is a raw 7 foot center who could use a extra year of practice. Z spends his last year with the Cavs teaching BJ
Sam Young is a solid SF who can come in and contribute right away. At 6 foot 8, he does everything well and he could back-up LeBron at SF.
Danny Green is a 6”6’ lockdown defender. He just needs a extra year to develop his offensive skills. Will spend a good part of the season in the Development League
Milenko Tepic is a 6”7’ PG/SG. He is a offensive PG but can only guard SG’s because he isn’t too fast. With his height he passes right over defenders and creates mismatches.

Depth Chart-

C-Zydrunas Ilgauskas/BJ Mullens/Jarron Collins
PF-David West/Lamar Odom/Darnell Jackson
SF-LeBron James/DaJuan Summers/Danny Green
SG-Mike Miller/Delonte West/Tarence Kinsey
PG-Mo Williams/Milenko Tepic

Delonte is coming off the bench as the backup PG/SG. Can mix with Tepic well because Tepic plays PG on offense and SG on defense. West would be better at SG on offense and guarding PG's on defence. He won't play the 40 min. a game he was playing last season but will still play significant minutes(30-35).

 

[williemayshayes]

You've done your homework...good work. There are some asterisks I must put however.

Ben Wallace is not going to walk away from 14M. He is going to seek a buyout. And if we go the buyout route, we're going to look to trade him in some kind of buyout-sharing arrangement, where we trade his salary and we foot a part of the buyout bill. When we're buyers in a market, not sellers, we do have some strings attached when we get what we want. A buyout of Wallace, without a trade however, will result in the percentage of his salary which we bought out, being factored into the actual buyout amount (for details, see this link). So, since Ben's 2009-2010 salary is $14M, we would presumably pay off all 14 million on the spot. But it would not get him off our books...we still owe $14M on our cap, even though it does NOT count against the luxury tax. With this, there's no way we won't trade Ben's contract.

Either way, the signing of Odom for 7M per year won't happen because we won't have the cap space. If we used the MLE to sign him, his salary would only be 5.5 or so million. Will he take that? I don't know. We have to at least make the contract offer.

But I think we're going to try to get a big time player using Ben's salary. Who it is, I don't know, because I have no clue who is available. Right off the top of my head, I think we'd revisit that Shaq trade which bombed in February. But I'm sure some other opportunity will be out there (Tyson Chandler? David Lee?)

 

[MYoung23]

Umm, you didnt notice that Trey Johnson hasnt been on the team in months?