Following up on some of the comments in yesterday's game recap post, NBA Roundtable looks at the Hawks' potential cap space. It's a good post* thought it does leave out Josh Childress's potential cap hold. Last summer** his cap hold was $14.533 million.
*Especially the reminder that, if Jamal Crawford plays out his contract in Atlanta, it will expire at the same time that Al Horford's (assumed) extension kicks in.
**assuming accurate research from me at the time
I'm not a fain of re-signing Joe Johnson both due to his established talent level versus the cost of re-signing him and my long-standing concerns that he will peak/has peaked early and will begin to decline at a relatively young age due to the volume of minutes he's played both here and in Phoenix. However, it's hard to envision how the Hawks build a team as strong as this year's squad if Johnson leaves in free agency unless they manage to lose Johnson via a sign-and-trade, trade the rights to Childress and/or Jamal Crawford's (by then) expiring contract, get great value* from their late first-round draft pick, and use the MLE wisely.
*either by using it or trading it
That's a lot of moving parts, many of them dependent on the Hawks' needs meshing with the wants and needs of other teams and those of other players. To this point, the team has (eventually) benefited from a combination of patience and aversion to risk. I suspect they will try to keep things as much the same next season as they can.
1 comment:
Maybe this is just wishful thinking, but I believe it's possible that increased usage/improvement of Josh Smith, Al and (especially) Marvin could offset a decent amount of what the Hawks would lose if Joe left.
I actually think Childress would be a great fit if he came back under those circumstances, but I'm assuming that's no longer in the cards.
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