2023-2024 OFF SEASON REPORT LEAGUE NEWS
The salary cap for this season has been set at $124,984,629 (+ $3.6 Million) and the luxury cap is now $152,481,247.
PLAYER CONTRACTS
Kyrie Irving (PG), Rui Hachimura (SF), DeAndre Jordan (C), Daniel Gafford (PF), Davis Bertans (PF) and Charles Wallace (SF) are all set to become free agents. I think Kyrie is going to be difficult to resign. He is only 31 years-old and has many more years left in the tank, but he won't even entertain an extension, which tells me he is probably going to demand Damian Lillard money. Kyrie is great and he has been the face of the franchise for the last four years, but $45-50 mil per year might be more than I can afford, unless the owner is willing to open up his check book, which he isn't.
Rui Hachimura is likely going to seek a max contract, which could get kind of pricey, but there are not a ton of talented small forwards out there, so I may need to bite the bullet and over pay him. At 35 Jordan is at the end of his career, we already have three other centers and he was looking for $14 mil a year for an extension, so we won't be resigning him. Davis Bertans, Daniel Gafford and Charles Wallace are all solid players and I would love to keep them if I can, but like Kyrie, Bertans and Gafford are also unrestricted free agents.
I will probably make qualifying offers to both Hachimura and Wallace, but I'm not sure what to do about Kyrie. I'm leaning towards renouncing his rights to free up cap space, because I really don't think I'm going to be able to afford him. I do plan on exercising the rookie option on Marcus Donovan, which will ensure that he is with the team through the 2024 season (I have one more rookie option year remaining) and I'm also going to exercise our team option on Derrick Favors for the 2023-24 season.
STAFF CONTRACTS
Fred Hoiberg has left the team and is now the head coach for the Detroit Pistons. His contract is worth $7.5 mil over five years. That is nearly the budget for my entire staff! As a matter of fact, my staff budget is $9.9 mil, which is impossibly low compared to the rest of the league.
Anyway, since I can't afford to hire...well...anyone, I promoted Jason Thompson to 1st assistant, Phil Weber to 2nd assistant and then I hired Jerald Stewart as the third assistant. Stewart was the cheapest coach I could find and I still ended up exceeding my staff budget by $232,271...a $9.9 million dollar staff budget is laughable. All I have to say is that Jerry Reinsdorf is a cheap bastard...but don't quote me on that.
DRAFT NEWS
We have no picks in this years draft.
OWNER MEETING
Jerry will be satisfied with a deep playoff run, as long as I can keep the team within the CAP. That is going to be difficult, but I suppose that's why they pay me the big bucks, right?!? One thing that I found very surprising, is that Jerry is not demanding that I keep Kyrie...hmmm. That could be good and bad. If Jerry demanded that I keep him, he'd probably let me over spend to resign him, however his lack of commitment to Kyrie tells me that he is serious about not exceeding the salary cap. I can't afford Kyrie and Hachimura without exceeding the cap and I'm 100% certain that exceeding the cap is not going to sit well with Jerry.
---------------------
