It seems unreal that Danny has gone through all this effort to sign Hayward and now finds himself in a position where he has to unload a key asset(s) to acquire another.
Unless you consider Rozier a key asset (which I believe you don't), we don't have to unload a key asset to acquire Hayward.
Rozier + Jackson for Hayward works just fine (assuming we stash Yabu and decline team option on Mickey).
Problem is, IT-AB-Smart are all entering the final year of their contract. It's highly unlikely we resign all 3 of them, so at least one of them has to be traded. Regarding Crowder, we already have far too many SFs so it might be in our best interest to trade Crowder as well.
this is pure speculation that keeps getting kicked around to justify trading 1 or 2 of them away for peanuts. Let Danny and Wyc deal with opening the checkbook if the team does well after the upcoming season. A team that reaches the conference finals or the finals themselves is worth it. the team will likely have 3 players getting their max in IT, Al and Hayward. AB getting between 20-25 mill, Smart getting about 12-15 mill and a lot of rookie deals and vet min players. sure, over the cap but if we're very successful, I don't think they'd have a problem with paying the players.
It's not the cap that's the issue. They're willing to exceed the cap. But they don't want to get anywhere near the luxury tax.
2017-18 salary cap numbers
Cap: $99.093 M
Lux. Tax: $119.266 M
Floor: $89.184 M
MLE: $8.406 M
Mini-MLE: $5.192 M
Room Exc.: $4.328 M
The tax is far more punitive than in past years:
$0 - $5m = $1.50
$5 - $10m = $1.75
$10m - $15m = $2.50
It increases like that so that at $25m it's $4.25. What this means is that even a relatively small overage requires some serious cash. If you go $7 into the penalty you're looking at an $11m extra charge. Then it gets worse if you're a repeat offender (3 out of 4 seasons into the tax) - add $1 to each of those numbers. That same $7m overage becomes an additional $18m.
Thus the luxury tax really is the limit. If we resign IT next year we're already going to be butting up against the luxury tax and there's very little chance that Wyc is going to want to do that - especially for consecutive seasons. It just gets enormously expensive very quickly. So it's not THIS year that's the issue but what is coming down the pike for the next 3 years after. But since the moves we make this year will impact future years (as most deals aren't for one year), it's a very powerful consideration right now.
It also doesn't help matters that the cap (and therefore the tax) are coming in slightly lower than originally projected. That creates additional concerns when planning for future years.