I can see Monte being conservative in that sense if his plan doesn't work out, but Monte didn't create cap to sign role guys I'd bet.
The hoopshype article posted by
@Hoovtrain helped clarify things up a bit, but at first instance, this looked like Vivek being a cheapskate rather than some big plan to sign an impact guy.
As of now, we have 6 players on the roster. If we pick the option of Kessler, and extend a QO to Neemias, that goes up to 8. I'm not counting our SRP, since I expect them to spend the year in Stockton.
Adding Sasha with the room exception brings us to 9. We need at least 3 more guys, mostly in the front court to fill out the roster. An "impact" FA will take up most of the cap, meaning the rest of the roster will be filled out by minimum salary guys.
Needless to say, our current roster is guard heavy. Some of the players have the height, if not the build to slide to 3. I think we'll see a lot more 3 guard lineups this year (unless, we get an impact SF like OG). Assuming Keegan moves to PF, we have no one behind him, and Neemias has still to prove anything in the main league to be thrust with the responsibility of backing up Domas. So, lots of question marks.
Let's see what Monte is able to turn this cap space into. My guess would be that part of this is used to pay Domas, and the rest is used to fill out the roster with useful, but not "impact" guys. I mean more Trey and less Kuzma, but we'll see.
By itself, it's not necessarily a bad thing. Most contending teams are built around a big 2, or in some cases, a big 3. The latter is often a challenge, since it typically forces teams to go deep into LT, or have no depth. Fortunately, our big 2 are not being paid like tier 1 stars, so we are not in salary hell (hopefully, their performance inches up to those levels though). Plus, our biggest hope for the third member of the big-3 is a rookie, who is getting paid peanuts by contrast. If he can jump to the next level, we already have our impact guy, and need to fill out the roster with complementary pieces.