a few responses...
Myth #1: Andrei’s trade value will increase toward the February deadline
this one is more true than people realize. it's easy to say, "trade AK's expiring contract," but the scenarios in which the jazz could do this would be few and far between. unless it's a salary dump (in which case the jazz would be the team surrendering the assets), a team has to either really want AK or really want to dump non-expiring salary. so if AK's one year and 17M sounds bad, do you really want to take back elton brand's 3 years and 43M? so that leaves us with the following: does an under-the-cap team really want AK bad enough to trade for him without sending back undesirable contracts? the nets, heat, knicks and bulls didn't clear cap space to go after AK. they'd have to strike out on a long list of marquee names to talk their fans into AK being an acceptable contingency plan -- and that's coming from one of this board's few remaining AK believers.
where i disagree with infection is that AK is just "bad salary." AK is overpaid, there's no question about that. but "bad salary" can't impact a game in that many ways. "bad salary" is tmac earning 23M to sit behind the bench in an armani.
Myth #2: Carlos Boozer can/will be used in a sign-and-trade
inf, you're wrong here. S&T isn't as complex as you think. i still think it's a long-shot option in boozer's specific case given the math involved (more on that in a sec), but you treat it like you need a team of army engineers to make it work. S&Ts happen.
the math: the S&T option generally works because it benefits everybody. player gets more money, new team gets a player they couldn't have gotten otherwise, old team gets an asset. but those first two are only true if you're talking about a max deal. if you're talking about a max deal, the old team can do max years and 10.5% raises, taking a contract starting at 16M to a much higher total than if there's one less year and 8% raises. but if the player isn't going to command a max salary anyway, then the new team can offset that by just raising the first year salary. in other words, if team X wants to surpass the jazz's offer of a deal starting at 10M with max raises, they'll just offer 12M and get him without surrendering any assets.
so what does all that mean? boozer's not going to get the max, so the bulls, nets, knicks and heat wouldn't need to give anything up to offer him a similar contract to what the jazz could offer with bird rights. if another team wanted him that DIDN'T have the cap space, then they'd have to explore sign and trade scenarios.
at the end of the day, though, likeliest scenario is that he re-signs or he walks.
Myth #3: We will use the mid-level exception
not a myth. we'll have to use a decent portion of it to retain matthews. i could make the case that they shouldn't use more than about 3M of it on him, but the fact is, they'll use it, or they'll lose matthews. but you're right, they won't use it to find a quality free agent from another team.
Myth #4: We will fix the big-man issue
i threw up a little when you made the jarron collins reference. but ya, not a lot of quick fixes here. if our big man picture looks drastically different next year, it will be because of internal improvement.
Myth #5: We have a plan as to which players we will bring back and will execute that plan aggressively
true. i think you always have a plan and a contingency plan... but you don't have to look any further than last july 1 to realize that players can exercise their rights just as easily as you can exercise yours. i think if the jazz had gotten their way last summer (and i had gotten mine), then boozer would have opted out and given them a 12.67M buffer on their team salary.... of course, if that had happened the team would have won 45 games and missed the playoffs, but still.
Myth #6: We can use our trade exceptions
also false. look, you're not going to get an allstar w/ trade exceptions, but a lot of teams will find themselves in similar positions to where the jazz were at last year: if we could only get rid of player X, we'll lessen our tax blow, and we'd be willing to surrender these assets to do it. obviously a lot depends on the other pieces in our own salary puzzle, but i guarantee you that any over-the-tax team with guys in that 4-6M salary range will make multiple calls to KOC next season
