Screw it, I'd roll with 4 max players and into the abyss of luxury tax. $120M on 4 players? Awesome. $160M payroll? Let's do it. We will be the team that ends LeBron's legacy. We will be the team that dethroned the Warriors little reign of terror.
Wyc and co. will still make money if we are hanging more banners.
I say sign Hayward and then trade Bradley/Crowder/Smart/LAC or MEM 1st for George. I love all three guys, but Crowder is redundant, AB deserves to get paid, and Smart will get a sizeable raise as well.
Trading away three impact players who are all defensive studs is a tough pill to swallow, but we are getting all-stars in return and will rely on draft picks and young guys at lower salaries to fill their voids and add depth. Rozier, Brown, Zizic, Tatum, Ojeleye, and some vets will solidify the bench. Maybe we get Porter/Anton/Doncic next year.
We should be able to stay under the luxury tax threshold this season, avoiding the repeater another season. If we send out enough salary for George (say Bradley/Crowder/Smart/Jackson/pick), it's possible. Using rough estimates, Hayward (or Griffin) 30M + Horford 28M + George 20M + Thomas 6M = 84M. Tatum 5M, Brown 5M, Zizic 1.5M, Rozier 2M, Ojeleye 1M adds approximately 15M. That's roughly 99M for 9 players. The luxury tax is set at $119M I believe. We can certainly add multiple vet min guys to round out the roster for under $20M (might not even be able to if we wanted since we can only sign vet min guys).
So, we would enter the luxury tax in 2018-19 when we give IT4 and PG13 their max contracts. Then we get hit really hard the year after, but that's Horford's last year of the contract. I think we can handle one year of severe penalty.
Forgive me if this post is littered with inaccuracies, but I'm under the impression it's possible. Let me dream!