I'm sure this has been discussed before, but it is just dawning on me.
Sheed's salary this year is $6.2M
under league rules, you can trade that away for a return value of $7.9M
that's a lot of scratch to offer a player (David Lee?) looking for more than the Mid Level
Toss in Big Baby and you go up to 11.2M in expiring contracts to offer someone - like say New Orleans for Emeka Okafor? (if they decide to deal Paul)
This is a good thing. A very good thing to have in our pocket. Not saying it will be used for sure, but we have a great opportunity here.
The "FAQ" should be coming out in the next 48 hours, but yes, we've got some trade chips. If Rasheed agrees to retire, we can package him with the non-guaranteed deals of Gaffney and LaFayette, and can bring back up to $9.9 million in salary.
Another thing I've pondered is whether we could bribe some team with cap space to give us a trade exception. We could trade Rasheed, Gaffney, and LaFayette to a team with cap space. That would net us a roughly $8 million trade exception, that we could use over the next year. As an incentive for the other team, we could send them cash, and once they renounced / bought out everyone, they'd have the same cap space they originally had.
Obviously, a trade for players would be preferable, but the trade exception as a fall back wouldn't be bad.