Neal has a cap hold of only $1m. Keep him to the end of free agency and give him something like $3.5 if we want to keep him.
I'm not sure if you read what I wrote, so I'll cliff it. It is quite long.
Assuming $62m salary cap:
- We have $15m to sign Manu and a free agent. Hopefully Manu would be willing to take MLE money, around $5m, but if he took $7m that would still give us $8m for a free agent. We could get more by trading away Mills/Joseph or restructure Diaws contract to bump that up a couple million.
- At this point we will be up against the cap, so we resign Splitter and Neal using their bird rights.
- Jack gets the room exception, if he wants more then we can afford to lose him and play Kawhi 10min/game more. He will be 35 next summer, somebody might offer him more but he's not so important to us that we have to resign him imo.
There is a lot of quality in 2013 free agency for a team looking for a big man. Looking past the all stars of Howard, Bynum and Josh Smith, theres West, Jefferson, Millsap, Kaman, Brand, all of whom could really help us and see an end to Bonner/Blair for good and extend Timmys career.