Originally Posted by
Pelicanidae
If Davis stays, which I just want to clarify is something which I do not believe will happen at all, then I'm honestly not entirely sure where to go next.
Hill will not be stretched. He's coming into the final year of his deal. Either you trade him off with an asset to just be free of his contract, or you just eat that final year. No reason to stretch him now, in his final year, when his stupid contract finally has some use a large expiring.
We aren't going to have $30m, imo. Coming into next season, the salary cap is $109m. If we keep Davis, and Randle opts out, we will have roughly $80m guaranteed. Signing Zion will cost 120% of the rookie scale, which is equivalent to a little over $10m. So we will have something like $90m guaranteed once Zion is signed. That leaves us with around $19m left, and while there are still things like the MLE, we have another $6m or so in cap holds for guys like Diallo and Miller anyway, so that's still not free money.
With $19m, our options are severely limited. Our biggest requirements would be trying to finally fill that gap at SF, and a point guard. If we could bring back Payton for something like $5m, I'd be happy to do so. While he's far from perfect, he did play reasonably well for us last season and signing him for a relatively small amount would give us $12m or so left in order to try and make a run a decent SF. My first call would probably be to Bojan Bogdanovic. He's not fantastic, but he's unrestricted and $12m would be an increase on his previous salary. He's a legitimate 6'8, and he shoots about 43% from deep. He's a little older than I'd like at 30, and he's not a very good defender, but with Jrue, Zion, and AD, I feel like we should be able to put together a solid enough defense to cover for that.
Although it would be a severe pay-cut, I'd also look into Harrison Barnes. I don't love him as much as some of the other people on this board do, but he's a solid enough player and he's developed a good three point shot. I don't think he takes it, but if he was willing to sign for $12m or thereabouts, I'd happily take him.