We can (and should, honestly) argue over who Vlade picked and if they were the right pick at each slot, but one thing I love about what Divac did was add to the roster with guys on their rookie deals. With the salary cap exploding, guys on rookie contracts that can contribute will be the biggest bargain in the NBA.
If Papagiannis, Richardson and Labissiere are capable of being end of the bench depth this year and something more in the years to come then that's great value. Should Arturas Guidatis and/or Isaiah Cousins show enough in summer league to be worthy of a roster spot then a 2 year deal with a team option for a 3rd gives even more depth for pennies on the dollar. Bogdanovic will wait until next year when he's not bound by the rookie wage scale but I'm guessing he'll come cheaper than established NBA free agent SGs.
Again, it's all contingent on these guys (at least some) becoming contributors but these could prove to be incredibly shrewd draft day moves by Vlade.
Yeah, this is a point worth making. On Thursday I was thinking that these guys may not take up active roster spots, but trading into those extra picks at least gives us a good base of cost-controlled players while the salary cap is shooting up and taking the average size of veteran contracts up with it.
Now I'm thinking this may be a way to fill end of the bench roster slots for next season cheaply while maximizing the available cap space that we can spend on our core rotation.
Cousins
.......................15.7
Gay
.............................13.3
Koufos
.............................8
Collison
........................5.2
McLemore
......................4
Cauley-Stein
................3.5
Casspi
..............................3
Papagiannis..... .....1.8
Butler
...........................1.5
Richardson........ ...1.2
Labissiere................1
Ellington.........................9
Cousins.......... .........9
60 million (34 million in cap space)
Before making any trades, we could have the minimum required 12 players under contract already and 5 of them aren't costing us much more than the minimum cap holds. If we want Rondo back at about 15 million, that leaves 17 million to spend. We could try to trade Koufos, Collison, and McLemore for a cheaper rotation player and/or future picks and push that cap space up to 26 million or so where we can target a max free agent without losing Cousins, Gay, Rondo, Casspi, or Cauley-Stein. We'll have to see what kind of demand is out there for Seth Curry but it's possible we could re-sign him with the room exception (about 3.5 million) once we spend our cap space.
