Ideally for Davis if we did a sign+trade, assuming that BBD signed a deal worth around 5 million per, we'd get a first rd pick and a 2.5 million trade exception.
I don't get why Boston would do a sign and trade if the reason he isn't resigned is because the amount is to high. That doesn't pass the logic test.
5 million per without bird rights means that is the entire MLE. That is too high. I think that logic is sound.
I think the logic of potentially trading Davis is fine.
First, we DO have "Early Bird" rights on him, so we don't need to use the MLE to sign him. "Early Bird" rights simply stipulate that no other team can offer more than the MLE and we have the right to match that offer.
Second, if a team offered Davis an MLE contract, we could sign and trade him if we thought the MLE was too much for him but thought that what the other team was offering was good value. Additionally, if Davis signs an MLE deal, he'd be a BYC player, and we could only take back about half of what he makes in salary. This means that in order to do a sign and trade involving Davis we'd either have to trade with a team like Memphis, in which case we'd take back much less money, making the deal fit into the financial logic, or we'd have to package davis with the expiring deals of TA and Scal in order to make a large enough outgoing salary (Davis+Scal+TA) for the incoming salary to be within 125% of (1/2 Davis+TA+Scal). Again, in this case if 5.4 is too much for Davis, well being able to sign davis for "too much" and unload 2 more players who shouldn't be playing for one better contributing player would be worth it for the C's.
For example, we could not trade Davis at 5.4, Scal, and TA for Hamilton, because though the outgoing salary would be 11.31 million, because Davis is BYC, his salary would only count as 2.7 million outgoing for us, so it would be like we were giving out 8.6 million in contracts which would only bring back a maximum of 10.77 million, and Hamilton makes 11.6 million. However, if Detroit really wanted Davis and wanted to get out from Hamilton's extension so they could add a 2010 FA to their Gordon/Villanueva/Stuckey young core, they could accept Davis at 5.4, Pruitt, TA, and Scal for Hamilton, which I think would work under the cap.