I'm not seeing that much available space without a sizable cap increase. As things are now, the cap will be $108 million in 2019. We'll have a better idea of what will be next week when the 2018 cap is set. That's a fairly close estimate though. We have about $54 million in contracts that don't include Booker's extension or Ayton, Bridges, and Okobo. I won't bother trying to fit King, that's $1 million bucks at the most.
Jokic signed his
max for an estimated 5 years/$147 million. Bookers will be pretty close to that also. Both are young and coming off rookie deals and neither meet the super max qualifiers
so they get 25% of the cap. That will start his contract off at
approximately $27 million. Add that to the $54 and you're looking at a $81 million payroll without counting the rookies.
Fultz makes $8.4 million for his 2nd year as the #1 overall pick and
Zach Collins makes $3.7 as the #10 pick, throw in $1 million for Okobo also. That will go up a little bit but $13 million for all 3 seems fair, if not low. That's $94 million without counting minimum cap holds, rookie holds for any picks we make in next years draft. So we'd be at $24 million in cap space, at the absolute most. That's without cap holds or rookie salaries from next year, so it's probably about $5-6 million less than that. Stretching Knight helps but that might just get us to $30 million in cap space or so.
I don't believe the figure Espo is quoting is factoring in this year's rookies. Don't take "insiders" like Espo's word for it though, or mine, look it up yourself. After what Espo pulled today, I don't put much stock in anything he says*. I can't argue with math but the numbers he's posted don't add up right. I'm not saying I am an authority or anything but the figures are out there to do the math on your own. I tried to link all mentions of salaries I could, like Fultz and Collins for reference, and here's the 2019 payroll for the Suns.
http://www.spotrac.com/nba/phoenix-suns/cap/2019/
*Espo teased last night that the free agent signing period would start today for the Suns, after retweeting the other message from another "fan" saying that the first piece would fall today to figure out where Lebron is headed because the Suns were making a deal. Today, when it came time to say what was happening, Espo said he signed with Bright Side of the Suns to cover the Suns. That was his big tease about the Suns free agent period would start today. Total bait and switch move that's rather hokey. If his math was right though, I'd agree with him because there's really no disputing that but it doesn't appear to be and it seems like he's missing close to the amount our recent draft picks would cover, which would explain the $12 million discrepancy. They're not listed on salaries on Spotrac either, so it's an easy thing to overlook.
