Are you talking about bench players with large contracts? If this is the case then I am not sold that a mid-late first round draft pick is going to be the deal maker. IMO either they are going to want the player or not. (ET or Crabbe) Not sure the Memphis or Cleveland pick is enough of a incentive.
Same with the next tier (Harkless or Leonard) I say this because they all have 3 years left on their contracts. One year would be a different story.
But if you are talking Aminu or Davis you may be right. Both are decent players with good contracts. A pick could be the difference.
I'm just going to debunk the notion that getting rid of these contracts will be hard.
Brooklyn would probably give their BOS pick for Crabbe, thinking that they could turn him into a 16ppg scorer on 45/40/90 shooting. They need anything they can get.
They'd also give an asset for Harkless, who is a local product (from Queens), and who's 23 with unfulfilled potential and who's $9M isn't a problem.
If we're really set on shedding salary, we could easily trade Harkless, Crabbe, and Leonard to Brooklyn for one of their first round picks (25th?) and a cheap player like Kilpatrick. This would be a great deal for them as they have way too much cap space and won't attract free agents in the next few years, because they can't improve their team via their own draft picks. And because they don't have their own draft picks is why they would jump at the chance to take on 2 young, proven players for a late pick.
We really could trade away $36M and get a pick back by dealing with Brooklyn.
We could then turn around and trade a 1st, Turner, Davis, and Ezeli to Sacremento. Sacremento doesn't have their 2019 first (unprotected to Philadelphia) so we should trade our lottery protected 2019 first. They'll also have a shit ton of cap space with no power in the free agent market. Therefore, adding 2 rotation players to get a little better makes sense, even if those players are overpaid. Adding a pick in a year with which they have none makes sense for them as well. And since their trading nothing in return, it makes all the sense in the world for Divac.
Sacremento is the best destination to offload Turner and Davis by just giving them a draft pick.
With that, we would've shed $62M or so in salary, and swap out our 2019 1st (which should be lower than 20 in a less-talented draft) for the 25th pick.
So with that, we'd probably have the 15th, 19th, 25th, and 26th picks.
So hypothetically, we could take
Justin Jackson 15th, trade 19th and 26th for 16th and take Justin Patton, and take
Caleb Swanigan 25th.
So we would have this lineup with $38M or so in capspace ($45M if we traded Aminu somewhere along the way).
We'd have 5 good young prospects in Nurkic, Vonleh, Patton, Swanigan, and Jackson, with tons of flexibility.
Lillard / McCollum
McCollum / Kilpatrick
Jackson / ?
Aminu / Vonleh / Swanigan
Nurkic / Patton
There will be ways to offload our contracts without giving up a higher amount of picks, because Brooklyn and Sacremento are in very weird positions.
That would put us into play for someone like Millsap, Ibaka, Hayward, or even Griffin (If Paul leaves, as Olshey did draft Griffin). It'd be unlikely that we'd land any of those, but we'd be in play with a more formidable appearing team than last year (since we have a core of 3 good players instead of 2).
But if not, it puts us into a position for a package of 2 to 3 of the following players:
Wings: Thabo Sefelosha, Tyreke Evans, Danilo Gallinari, JJ Redick, Tony Allen
Forwards: James Johnson, Ersan Ilyasova, Taj Gibson, Amir Johnson, Patrick Patterson, Zach Randolph
Centers: Mason Plumlee, Andrew Bogut, Kelly Olynyk
Our hands are not tied at all. We have flexibility. We can really do whatever we want to do this summer.
