Coming off a successful season, and with 2018 NBA free agency just around the corner, we take a look at some bargain bin options for the Utah Jazz.
When the clock strikes midnight Saturday night (or is it Sunday morning?), every NBA team will be armed with their glass slippers in an attempt to woo free agents. Some teams are focused on retaining their (marquee) free agents. Others know they won’t be “competing” any time soon and others still are somewhere in between. Only time will tell what category the Utah Jazz will fall under, but they could be players this free agency.
According to Spotrac, the Jazz could have up to $11.7 million in practical cap space. In other words, this simply means that that is the maximum amount of money they could free up if they renounced the rights to all of their impending free agents and freed up as much as cap space possible.
So, if they renounced the rights to Derrick Favors, Dante Exum, Raul Neto, etc. and got all their cap holds off the books. A team can go over the salary cap to re-sign its own free agents (something I’ll touch on later), but as it stands right now, unless the Jazz agree to new deals with Favors/Exum, renounce their rights or let them sign with another team, they don’t have room to sign free agents because of their cap holds.
The Jazz also have the full $8.6 million non-taxpayer mid-level exception, along with the full $3.4 million bi-annual exception. For the purposes of this article, this means that because the Jazz have “extra” money to spend.
Speaking of free agents, the Jazz have two major ones — Favors and Exum. Favors is an unrestricted free agent, but the Jazz own his Bird rights, which means they can go over the NBA salary cap to re-sign him if they so choose. Exum is a restricted free agent, which means they have the ability to match any offer another team offers him, and can also go over the salary cap to re-sign him.
Even if Utah re-signs one or both of the aforementioned players, it couldn’t hurt to target some more help.