Suns Squared: Free Agent Analytics
The Suns exit the draft and enter free agency with a hop in their step and a promising top five pick. However, free agency presents additional opportunity to add to the young team.
While Josh Jackson projects to be a great addition and was in some minds the best player in the draft, the Suns still hope to add more talent around Jackson Booker, Chriss, and Bender to pave the way for a bright future. Blake Griffin, Gordon Hayward, Andre Iguodala, Paul Millsap, and Otto Porter represent the top of the free agent class. All of them bring skills and leadership the Suns could use.
It is important to note the Suns cap situation before diving into a breakdown of each player first. The Suns have $72 million in active contracts going into next season, with the cap set at $99 million that would give the Suns significant space. However, The Suns have a couple cap holds that must be considered. A cap hold is the amount reserved for the team to sign their own free agents and is usually a percentage of their previous salary, it is explained in more detail on this site (http://www.cbafaq.com/salarycap.htm#Q38). Alex Len, Alan Williams and Ronnie Price are all Suns free agents with cap holds. Len and Williams are restricted free agents and have cap holds of $12 million, and $1.6 million respectively. Price is unrestricted but still, has a hold of $1.4 million. Josh Jackson, as an unsigned first round pick also has a guaranteed contract and thus a cap hold of $5 million. Adding those all up it comes out to just over $20 million which cuts the Suns Cap room at about $6.4 million.
To clear more space the Suns could “renounce” their rights to sign their free agents, which would free cap space at the cost of losing the ability to exceed the cap to re-sign them. Also in the case of the Len and Williams, renouncing restricted free agents means the Suns would lose the ability to match an offer sheet they sign. The summary of all this is that to sign any of the players above, the Suns would need to dump salary like Brandon Knight or Tyson Chandler, and/or renounce Len, Williams, and Price