Free agency

[Peter Delevett <pdelevett@amcity.com>]

Not that I am exactly giving up on this season or anything ... oh, hell,
of course I am. But thinking about what Il Ducebag said about needing a
muscular veteran in the offseason, I took a look at this list of this
summer's free agents courtesy of NBAtalk. The list, BTW, is at:

http://www.sportstalk.com/nba/stuff/freeagents/freeagents_1-16-00.shtml

The best looking names, to me, are Gary Trent, Kurt Thomas and Bo
Outlaw. It's likely one or two of them will have to settle for the
minimum somewhere; the problem is, as I recall, we have already used our
$2 mil exception for next year on Duck Cheaney, correct? Taking Alex
Wang's last email into account, I will avoid mentioning names like
Chucky Brown, but Jerome Kersey might be worth a gander; he has always
won and worked hard. Ditto for AC Green; though he is now approximately
1,000 years old, his per-minute rebounding stats are better than
Oakley's this season. I would be keen on trading for a Grant Long (6 rpg
in 21 minutes, also better than Oakley) if he came cheap.

We also obviously need someone, anyone, to provide bench scoring. Most
attractive names IMO are Derek Anderson, Cuttino Mobley and Kendall Gill
(who actually, on a points-per-minute and FG% basis, has pretty
identical stats to Eric Williams, scary enough). Dennis Scott might also
fit here, though he's hardly a locker-room Santa. And, we sure could use
a young, big point guard to back up and eventually replace Kenny, and
I'm not talking Alvin Williams & The Chipmunks. Best names? Jacque
Vaughn, Howard Isley (the Jazz can't re-sign both of them), and Anthony
Carter (how sweet would it be to steal him from Pat Riley?). A couple
other interesting thoughts could be Chris Herren or the Clippers' Troy
Hudson.

Realistically, we will probably only have enough dough to fill 1 or
perhaps 2 of these needs. This leads to the next question: Does anybody
know how much cap room we can expect this summer? According to Bender's
site, the 00-01 salary cap will be at least $34.5 million. We have
Pervis, Danny and Overton (league minimum) rolling off the cap, and also
I think the remainder of Conlon's league-minimum deal. Not a bunch of
room even if we don't re-up Fortson. I'm foggy on the rules, but we
can't sign someone else, then re-sign Danny, because his salary counts
like double on our cap until he is signed or renounced, right? We will
also have to decide whether to re-up Adrian Griffin, which judging on
the results of the past month would be a mistake.

So, the main point of all this verbiage is, does anybody know how much
(if any) cap room we can expect this summer? I remember posting
something recently that had our salary total as the 10th highest in the
league, at something like $45 million?? If that's so, we won't do much
more than add another Calbert Cheaney.