NBA salary cap exercise: What player would every team amnesty?

Boston Celtics – Kemba Walker

This one may not sit well with some people for obvious reasons. Bringing in Kemba Walker last season felt like a huge win for Celtics fans and for much of the season it was. Walker was an All-Star for the fourth season in a row and averaged 21.2 points, 4.9 assists and 4.1 rebounds. He is a strong outside shooter and a great team leader. Why should the team consider moving on from him?

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His knees and his contract make for a complicated situation for the team to address. Turning Kyrie Irving into Kemba Walker made complete sense on court but the financial impact was always going to be brutal. Walker is due $34.3 million in 2020-2021 (age 30 season), $36 million in 2021-2022 (age 31 season) and has a player option for $37.7 million in 2022-2023 (age 32 season). Walker was dealing with knee issues before the season shutdown and the fact that he enters the bubble with continued swelling of the same knee is troubling, to say the least.

As is the team will not have meaningful cap space until the summer of 2022 but face tough decisions before then. Gordon Hayward has a player option for next season and Jayson Tatum has flirted with the idea of taking the qualifying offer so that he can get a max contract sooner rather than later. Building around Tatum and Brown has always been the priority and has become even more apparent after the leaps both young wings made this season.

The Celtics would be able to reshape their roster around the young guys should they do this and Hayward opts out of his current deal. That would take the team from a team payroll next year of $140.6 million all the way to $72 million. Even if Hayward opts in they would go into the summer of 2021, where the free agent crop is set to be stellar, with a payroll of $51 million. This would be plenty of space (barring cap smoothing being instituted following the pandemic) for the team to max out Tatum and add another young star that better fits their cores timeline.

For those of you shouting me down telling me I do not know anything, let’s let the bubble games do the talking. While many are not buying into Carsen Edwards just yet, watching him and Marcus Smart soak up the point guard duties while the offense primarily runs through Tatum could be an eye-opening experience.