Secondly, the Celtics have a ton of trade exceptions. The $11 million left for Hayward, $5 million for Theis, near $5 million for Kanter. The Celtics can fit players they receive back in a Kemba trade against those exceptions, so they could still get a full Kemba exception. Say, for example, the Celtics traded Kemba to Phoenix if Paul leaves. Phoenix doesn't quite have cap room, but if they trade Dario Saric they would. Saric could fit into the rest of the Hayward exception, and we could get a full Kemba exception.
Interesting, I hadn't thought about it that way. So we have TPEs at $11.0M, $5.0M, $4.8M, and $1.6M. That is $22.4M total, so X 1.25 ($28.0M) is still short of Kemba's $36.0 but it does provide a possibility to kind of consolidate all of these smaller TPE into one bigger one. Hard for a team to line up with all of these though but no doubt the Celtics would be able to "roll over" some of this in a trade of Kemba.
So an example would be Chicago sends Satoransky ($10M covered by TPE) and Young ($14M as incoming) for Kemba ($36M outgoing) and we end up with a $22M TPE ($36M out - $14M in). That isn't terrible. Then trade multiple picks to Atlanta for S&T Collins at the $22M (Using TPE), sign Fournier (if we still feel we need him), and we have a pretty big tax bill but a nicely upgraded and balanced team:
Smart
Brown
Tatum
Collins
Thompson
Pritchard, Satoransky, Fournier, Young, RWill
Edwards, Langford, Nesmith, Parker, GWill
OK, that is my new "Plan A".
Terrific and well balance starting 5, a really good albeit expensive bench (Satoransky and Young would be expiring at least), and pretty useful deep depth players, all who can actually play when needed (maybe with Edwards being a bit of a stretch).