Why the Hawks will trade Jason Terry

[Guest]

For starters, let me say that I totally agree with Jaywalker's post (and NYNEX's posts on the RealGM NY board) about Terry. He's established that his "true" position is PG, he's good, etc.

But I've come to the (tentative) conclusion that he WILL be traded sometime this year -- probably this summer, the more I think about it -- and the ENTIRE reason is financial. The recent announcement of a $50M luxury-tax ceiling for last year, IMO, was the death knell for Terry's career in Atlanta ... especially combined with Ratliff not opting out of his contract.

The Hawks' payroll for this year (without Newble) looks to be $53.5M, by my calculations. Just with Shareef, Ratliff, Kukoc, Henderson, Nazr, Crawford, DerMarr, and Dickau, the Hawks are committed to roughly $53M in salaries for 2003-04.

Even if they let Glover walk and don't give Terry the max, you're talking about a $60M+ payroll in '04 and a sizable luxury tax hit. But if they can unload a bad contract (Henderson, Crawford) as the price for letting Terry go, maybe the Hawks can avoid the tax altogether.

The reason for stalling on Terry's extension is that once he signs it, a "poison pill" provision kicks in that makes him essentially untradeable -- it's like BYC, only worse (his trade value becomes the average salary over the life of the extension). So it's likely that he'll be traded in time for his new team to extend his contract.

[Admin]

Well next year we will be able to unload Toni to someone for a draft pick since he will be an expiring contract and we can do the same the following year with Hendu so we wont be too bad off, plus Crawford will be ending then as well. As long as we keep ourselves from overpaying stiffs we will be okay.