All of them, including the newly acquired Landry Shamet, will be 25 or younger next year, while age 25 is traditionally the beginning of an NBA player’s five-year peak. While Booker, Ayton, Bridges and Johnson all contributed as top-seven players on an NBA Finals team who had the second-most regular season and second-most playoff wins in the NBA, they have not even entered their primes yet. Jones was commenting about the Suns young players. “Across the board at every position, we just need to get stronger, we need to mature,” Jones said this week after the Shamet trade. James Jones gave us a hint of his focus heading into free agency and trade season. I won’t bore you with all the cap details, but replacing them with free agents would drain resources, leaving nothing left to spend on improving the team that lost the Finals and might even make them worse.Īssuming Paul and Payne are back, the Suns would then focus on shoring up weaknesses on that Finals team for another run next year. And I still believe there’s a lot more growth to his game that coach can unlock.”Īnother matter to consider: re-signing Paul and Payne makes it easier to improve on last year’s team. “Because we know how valuable he was for us. “Looking forward to talking to him soon to keep him with us,” Suns GM James Jones said of Payne. My guess is he signs with the Suns for around $8 million per year, for 3-4 years. It all depends on the 26-year old’s market with other teams. Of course, the Suns would love to pay their backup point guard a lot less than that, especially considering he was out of the league a year ago. The Suns can sign Payne for anything up to a $10.4 million starting salary for up to four years. Probably for more money than you want him to make, but that’s the NBA. There were rumors that Paul might get lured by another team away from the Suns, but those rumors were never real and have completely died down of late. You might wonder why team would give Chris Paul $30 million in a year he would turn 40 before the playoffs begin, but that year could be largely non-guaranteed while still giving Paul a nice going-away gift if he retires. The Suns are the only team who can offer him that 4th year since they own his ‘Bird Rights’. Paul’s ‘number’ is fairly common knowledge now - around $30 million per year - though the number of years is in question. Both players are eligible to sign with any team as of today, though the Suns have ‘Bird Rights’ on both that allow them to offer more money and/or years than any other team.īooth: Suns expect Aug 2 convo with Paul will ‘make everyone happy’ Sarver on bringing back Paul and Payne Paul declined his $44.2 million player option for the 2021-22 season, while Payne’s contract expired yesterday to make him a free agent. The Suns utmost priority, and probably the only thing you will hear about today, is to re-sign both Chris Paul and Cam Payne. Any team that uses the MLE or a sign-and-trade cannot exceed the apron. Apron: calculated as the Luxury Tax level + $6 million.This tax is counted at the end of the season. Luxury Tax: ALL OF THIS SPENDING counts toward the Luxury Tax, at which point the team has to pay multi-million dollar penalties to the other owners.Veteran Minimum: Sign any number of veterans for the league minimum.Bi-Annual Exception: Sign another team’s free agent for up to two years with up to a $3.7 million starting salary.Mid-level Exception: Sign another team’s free agent for up to four years with up to a $9.5 million starting salary.Bird Rights: used to re-sign their own free agents.As an over-the-cap team, the Suns can sign contracts using the following cap exceptions Thanks to ‘cap holds’ for the free agents, the Suns are well over the league’s Salary Cap. 3 Wings (Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, Jae Crowder). ![]() 2 shooting guards (Devin Booker, Landry Shamet).Today, the Suns will begin to assemble the rest of their roster for next season through either free agent signings or trades.įirst, let’s look at the roster and salary cap breakdown. The players under contract include four starters from the Finals team - Devin Booker, Mikal Bridges, Deandre Ayton and Jae Crowder - but don’t include any point guards, as Chris Paul declined his 2021-22 player option and Cameron Payne became an unrestricted free agent. One of those eight is a rookie, while another will miss all or most of next season with a knee injury. As Free Agency begins today, the Suns now only have only eight players - six in the rotation - under contract to defend their third-ever Western Conference Title.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |