They're saying the cap should remain around 58 million through 2012.
Our guaranteed contracts look like this:
Aldridge - $13,000,000
Wallace - $11,437,500 (player option)
Matthews- $6,505,320
Babbitt - $1,892,280
Williams - $1,442,880
N. Smith - $1,404,960
Total - 35,682,940
That leaves Batum, Crawford, Felton, Camby, Oden, Kurt Thomas, etc etc etc as free agents. Of that group, we will want to definitely keep Batum, and I think there's a good chance we will want to keep Crawford and Oden. Thomas and Camby are a crapshoot. Felton will depend on whether we can sign someone else who is better, or on how well he plays this season. If he plays at an All-Star level, we might want to keep him.
Let's say we sign Batum for 4 years, $40 million.
That would put our cap at $45,682,940 which would give us near 12.5 million to offer someone. If we could deal Babbitt for a second rounder or a draft pick of some kind, maybe we could get the extra couple million to offer a max deal to someone like Deron. It wouldn't leave any cap space for Crawford, so if he doesn't opt out after this season that would throw a major crimp into this plan. Or maybe Batum isn't worth 10 million a year. Maybe he's only worth 8 million a year. Maybe offer Batum 4 years and 32 million. That would put our cap at $43,682,940 which would give us enough space to offer max deal.
Or.... maybe we could convince Wallace to opt out and take a smaller deal with good security? I don't think he would get a max deal from anyone at this point in his career, so 4 years and 40 million or 5 years 50 million would put him around 34 or 35 by the time the deal runs out and would give us another 1.5 million to play with.
The question is Crawford. Will he opt out? If he doesn't, his 5 million will make things tricky.