I could definitely see Ainge bringing in Beasley, then trying to turn around and say to D Howard
"There. Now we got Rondo, a healthy Green coming back, and we got the bird rights to bring back Beas. Plus we have two draft picks and Paul Pierce. KG and Ray say they'll come back for a lot less money if you come here. That gives us
Rondo/Avery
Ray/draft pick/E Moore
Kg/Beas/JuJuan J
D Howard/draft pick
Pierce/Green
How does that team not compete in a big way, now and in the future?
Unfortunately, the money doesn't work. In order to sign Howard, we would have to waive the Bird Rights to pretty much everyone, so we would have to resign them all as unrestricted free agents with remaining cap space after signing Howard. And we would have less than $10 million (and that is very generous...it is probably closer to 7 or 8 after cap holds) to sign Ray, KG, Green and Beasley.
Wait a second.
The first thing you do is sign D Howard right? We have enough to do that, right?
Then you can sign Beas, right?
Then you can give out pretty low contracts to KG and Ray, right? Especially with JON and Bass also gone, right?
So I guess you can't bring back Green in this situation, but you can do the rest, right?
Well, let's say Rondo, Pierce, Bradley and Johnson are your roster for roughly 30 million, with no Bass, as he either declines his option or gets traded. I've heard estimates of the salary cap for next season ranging from $58m to $62m. Beasley's qualifying offer for next season is $8m and his cap hold $12m. Let's say he takes the qualifying offer. Since I don't feel like looking it up to get the exact number, let's say Dwight Howard gets $18m. That's $56m. Another $1m as a cap hold for the first round pick you don't trade for Beasley. With roster charges of about 500K for empty spots, if the cap is $60 million, you have approximately zero cap space for Garnett, Allen, or Green, and can sign one of them to the "room" exception for teams below the cap which I think is about $2.5m.
The one work-around I have come up with is to waive Marquis Daniels before the last game and sign Green to a minimum contract so that he has a tiny cap hold that you don't have to renounce and you can have Green plus your choice of either Garnett or Allen, if either is willing to play for under $3m, both if one of them is willing to play for the minimum. If Garnett were renounced then signed to a one-year contract, the Celtics would have their Bird rights again in 2013.
If Dwight Howard came to Boston, I'd rather keep that draft pick and split the money between Garnett and Allen rather than trade for Beasley, but I'd do the trade if it was necessary for Howard to want to be a Celtic.