Now that Richardson and Smart are extended could either be used to retain Schroder in a sign and trade? He may be a better fit going forward with the J’s.
How are we retaining Schröder by signing-and-trading him?
I think what he is suggesting is that Schroder becomes a UFA, signs with someone else, but then is traded back to us for Richardson or Smart. For one, I think that would hard cap us and second there are probably other rules preventing this.
I’m not quite sure what he’s suggesting, to be frank, but here are the options for retaining Schröder:
TL;DR: Schröder on a 1+1 deal next summer is reasonably likely, although keeping him beyond next season probably means we need to shelve bigger plans.
1) Sign Schröder with the big MLE, which hard caps us. This will start at around $10.5 million next year. I think this would most likely be a 1+1 deal, which would a) give Schröder the choice of re-entering free agency if he has a good year, or not if he doesn’t/is hurt, b) gives the Celtics early Bird rights the following summer, enabling them to offer a deal in free agency that year which starts at around $18 million in year 1, and c) would give him trade veto rights. In other words, they could make a pretty competitive offer at 1 year.
2) Sign Schröder to a 20% raise next year (so around $7 million), with the same 1+1 structure as above. The difference here is that an Early Bird deal would start at around $12 million instead of $18 million, so it’s unlikely we’d be able to keep him after next year if he’s restored his value for a couple of seasons. He’d have to either have a bad season/get hurt, or really love Boston such that he opted in, enabling the C’s to have full Bird rights after three years, which would let hem make an offer up to the max salary (not saying he’s a max player, but the C’s would have no effective limit as to what they could offer).
There look to be very few teams with cap room next summer, so I think either of these are pretty good possibilities. However, option 1 will require either a trade that reduces salary and/or waiving Horford (but not necessarily stretching, thus allowing him to be resigned). It would also preclude using the Fournier TPE, and also makes a major trade next summer less likely too, unless that trade somehow reduced salary.