Hey help me out here. I'm trying to write an article on the Sun's off-season, but it's tied to their cap space. I've done some research on the Sun's cap but I'm not positive that I'm coming up with a correct estimate. Here's what I've come up with (all contract numbers courtesy of sportrac.com):
We know that the guys listed below are all under contract. Tyler Johnson is in the last year of his contract. Spalding & Freddette have unguaranteed contracts.
Our free agents include these guys with the following cap holds:
Oubre & Holmes are restricted free agents (RFAs). While Daniels, Crawford & Bender are unrestricted (UFAs). The team has already declined Bender's option. In researching this, I found that teams are assigned a cap hold even for their unrestricted free agents until they release them. So to free up cap space a team needs to release UFAs that they don't intend to keep.
And unless they are traded, we know that the Suns have 2 picks coming up in this summer's draft. They will need to reserve money for those slots. I made the assumption that we will get the 2nd and 32nd picks (our current draft slot). I used last year's 1st & 31st salaries to estimate their cap hit --
Finally, we know that next years salary cap has been set at $109 Million.
If we put all this together, we get the following for our projected cap space knowing that we are shedding Spalding, Freddette, Daniels, Crawford & Bender:
About $7.5 million.
Geez. Is that right? If that's right, that blows.
Perhaps we don't have to sign our rookies until after free agency. I'm guessing that's probably true, since I didn't see any articles on Ayton signing his contract until August of last year. Which would be after free agency. In which case, we would really have about $16.8 million in cap space. Which is not great, but it is way better than 7.5.
If I understand it correctly, we can waive and stretch any of our players. Tyler Johnson seems the most likely candidate. If we waived Johnson, we would free up approximately $13 million (his contract would be stretched over 3 years). Bringing our possible cap space close to $30 million. Which should be enough to bring a near all-star level player. I'm guessing we won't waive him, but instead we'll trade Tyler and assets for a high impact point guard.
A note on all of this -- I'm guessing we will probably use up all of our cap space during this year's free agency trying to get a couple of above average NBA level players. After we land those players, we'll go over the cap to resign Oubre & Holmes. Which will leave us capped out for next year. Hurray!
So check my math for me, is it $7.5 million or $16.8 million?
And more important, what free agent(s) would you go after with either amount?