M.C. Swag said:
They're at 157 if they renounce all their cap holds. Dallas is comfortable offering Kyrie $40m/yr. Why would he leverage his way out of Dallas for anything less than the full max if he has a $40m offer? It makes no sense. And it makes less sense that Dallas would feel any sort of obligation to ASSIST in his exit.
I'm not about to try to attach any sort of logic to anything Kyrie Irving says or does. If he wants to go somewhere and thinks he has a better chance to win or be the primary ball handler, then maybe he does that.
Agree Dallas doesn't have to play ball. And Philly only has Swaps to use until 2029, because their odd picks are already traded. But if Philly really wanted him and Dallas didn't want Harden, you could do like Melton+Tobias+24/26/28 swaps and the 29 first, or bring in a 3rd team. I assume Maxey is off the table for them.
But Philly could definitely work within the hard cap scenario if they really wanted.