What should the Boston Celtics be willing to offer for Paul George?
Because of their stockpile of draft picks and young prospects, the Celtics can comfortably beat any other team's best realistic offer for the Indiana Pacers' All-Star forward. Having reached the 2017 Eastern Conference finals, Boston could hope to make the NBA Finals with George, particularly if the Celtics also sign Gordon Hayward or Blake Griffin as a free agent.
Yet Boston won't want to overpay for a player who can become an unrestricted free agent in 12 months and has made his interest in signing with the Los Angeles Lakers known.
Given all those factors, what's an appropriate offer for George?
Scenario A: Boston strikes out in free agency
Let's consider what it would take for the Celtics to acquire George. That depends on what they're able to do in free agency, and we'll consider the two realistic scenarios. Let's start with what happens if Boston is unable to sign either Griffin or Hayward. In that case, the Celtics would probably pass on other free agents, leaving them with about $19.3 million in projected cap space counting cap holds for restricted free agent Kelly Olynyk and 2016 first-round picks Guerschon Yabusele and Ante Zizic.
Depending where the 2017-18 cap comes in, that could be enough for Boston to acquire George without sending any salary in return. (The Celtics must end the trade no more than $100,000 over the cap to do so.) That would allow the Pacers to clear nearly $20 million in cap space in addition to getting some of Boston's store of draft picks.
However, the Celtics might want to send some salary in return if George is amenable to the idea of renegotiating and extending his contract, similar to what James Harden and Russell Westbrook did last summer. Westbrook's renegotiation and extension would serve as a template for what Boston could do with George.
First, the Celtics could use cap space to bump George up to the current maximum salary for players with seven to nine years of experience, which would give him an estimated $10.2 million raise. Then they'd tack on a fully guaranteed 2018-19 salary, giving George more money than he'd make playing out his current contract and signing for the estimated 2018-19 maximum salary.
Like Westbrook, George could also get a player option for a third season, giving him additional security. Declining the player option would allow him to get back on the market in the summer of 2019, when he'd be eligible to make 35 percent of the cap instead of 30 percent.
Maybe George is so intent on playing for the Lakers that the financial advantage of a renegotiation and extension isn't enough to make a difference, but it certainly gives Boston a better chance of having him beyond the upcoming season.
Scenario B: Boston signs a star
Of course, the Celtics are hoping it doesn't come to that, because they fully intend to sign either Hayward or Griffin after free agency opens at midnight Eastern on Saturday.
While Boston can easily get to $26 million in projected cap space by renouncing the rights to current free agents and waiving Tyler Zeller (whose 2017-18 salary is non-guaranteed through July 2), getting all the way to the estimated $29.7 million max salary for Griffin and Hayward will be a little trickier. At minimum, it would require trading guards Demetrius Jackson and Terry Rozier and having Yabusele and Zizic play outside the NBA another season, something they might not be amenable to doing.
Now at the cap after signing Hayward or Griffin, the Celtics would have to match salary to trade for George. That would require including at least one of Avery Bradley or Jae Crowder along with Jaylen Brown and Marcus Smart, or both Bradley and Crowder. (Boston could hypothetically get creative by trading one of these players for a smaller salary before signing Hayward, enabling them to keep Jackson and Rozier and bring over Zizic, as I did with Smart while running the team in the Dunc'd On mock offseason.)
Whatever the exact permutation, the cost of signing a star is that the Celtics would have to give up part of their core in a George trade, mitigating some of the value of bringing him in -- particularly if it's only for one season.
It's hypothetically possible for Boston to renegotiate and extend George even after signing a max free agent, but doing so would require cutting the rest of the roster to the bone. To create sufficient space, the Celtics would either have to trade Al Horford or basically every other rotation player besides Horford and Isaiah Thomas, and even if they could get picks out of those transactions it's hard to see the merit in sacrificing so much depth for a move designed to win now.
What should Boston offer?
Although I've outlined two scenarios, there are really three in terms of what the Celtics can and should offer. The first has them strike out in free agency and George uninterested in renegotiating and extending his contract. In that case, Boston could and perhaps should acquire George using only draft picks.
I'd be willing to offer next year's Brooklyn Nets pick with some form of protection, along with the Celtics' own pick in one of the next two years. Even a protected pick from the Nets -- which would probably convert into the pick Boston acquired from the Philadelphia 76ers in the trade down from No. 1 to No. 3 if it didn't convey -- would still be far better than any other pick a team would probably offer for George, and Indiana would not have to take back any bad salary.
If George is willing to renegotiate and extend, I'd include Brown in the deal to create the necessary cap space because he'd likely be marginalized with George's addition and the selection of Jayson Tatum in the draft. That's a reasonable price to pay for getting George for at least two seasons instead of as a rental.
If Boston lands Hayward, I'd include Bradley, Brown and Smart to match salary in a George trade. Crowder's cheap contract (he'll make an average of $7.3 million over the next three seasons) is simply too valuable to include, particularly because there's no risk of him leaving in free agency like Bradley. Only if the Celtics signed Griffin, leaving few minutes for Crowder at power forward, would I include him in a George deal.
Having signed Hayward in the Dunc'd On mock offseason, I traded Bradley, Brown, salary filler acquired for Smart in a separate deal and two lesser first-round picks -- the Celtics' 2018 pick and one from the LA Clippers that is lottery protected in 2019 and 2020 but converts to a second-round pick after that -- in a deal for George.
The danger for Boston is that their sheer number of valuable draft picks makes a deal more difficult to complete. The dream of getting the 2018 Brooklyn pick or the L.A. Lakers/Sacramento Kings pick the Celtics got from the Philadelphia 76ers might make their other picks look worse by comparison, even if they're still far better than anything Indiana could get from another team besides Boston.
The Celtics should be careful to avoid bidding against themselves. While there's certainly value in getting a deal done now so Brad Stevens and his coaching staff can integrate George in training camp, that shouldn't be reason for Boston to overpay for a possible rental.