So, let’s talk money and possibilities
We’re in the final stage. We’ve broken down just about everything.
Let’s take a look at what money would be left for each of the potential rosters.
Roster 1 – Wade, Felicio, Mirotic all stay + Butler still around
The guaranteed money handed out would be approximately $65,228,029 with the names on the roster and that does NOT include rookie scales being added. If you add those to the two picks of Jackson and Dorsey, that would be approximately $67,345,000 of guaranteed money using the rookie scales of last year’s draft. The cap floor was $84,700,000.
Swarm and Sting
So, just to get to last year’s cap floor (and a salary cap that is expecting to rise to around $101 million in ’17-18), we would have to spend $17,355,000. If we spent to the salary cap limit of $94.1 million of ’16-17, that number jumps up to $26,655,000.
(That was before the reports came out on Wednesday of a supposed $99 million salary cap in 2017-18.)
Here’s the thing: that’s not including Mirotic and Felicio’s deals if we keep them.
See how Wade’s throwing a wrench into everything?
Roster 2 – Wade leaves, Mirotic and Felicio stay + Butler being traded
Now, if Mirotic bolts with a big offer sheet and Wade leaves because Butler’s gone, the rebuild is a full-on go without question.
If you factor in Felicio staying with an offer sheet, that means there’s three roster spots open with a lot of cap room to work with and a young team (with a couple assets in young players and picks). Then, when you factor in the rookie scales of Fox, Anunoby and Hart, that adds up to approximately $6,069,371 towards the cap.
Wade and Butler account for approximately $42,496,918 of the 2017-18 cap if Butler stayed and Wade accepted his option. That’s a lot of cash not on the books.
So in all, we’d have $28,790,482 committed to the three rookies, Jerian Grant, Bobby Portis, Denzel Valentine, Paul Zipser and Cameron Payne with Mirotic, Felicio and Morrow all needing contracts. (Reminder: The cap floor was around $84.7 million in ’15-16.)
That’s a pair of restricted free agents with basically a league veteran minimum deal left for Morrow, which means a lot of cap space to try and persuade some veterans to consider coming to Chicago in free agency like Paul Millsap, Gordon Hayward, Danilo Gallinari, Otto Porter Jr. and J.J. Redick. (Hell, even Kyle Lowry could be an option to help bring Fox along at point guard.)