With free agency about to begin, I wanted to take one final look on how our cap space stands heading into the weekend. If you hate math, skip to the bottom to see the final tally.

Though many are disappointed in the draft, our trade was absolutely neccessary. We cleared cap space while also possibly retaining a role player or two. As pointed out last night by one of the commenters, we now have a 1-3 chance for an impact player, instead of a hit-or-miss on Zeller. This isn't about rating our players, however. We cleared much needed space. The 17th pick has a cap hold of $1,563,120. The 24th pick has a cap hold of $1,243,080. We saved $320,040 in space. But we also shipped out Azuibuke at $992,680. This creates a total savings of $839,116 when you add in the extra cap hold to replace Azuibuke's roster spot. The 2nd round picks only have the minimum cap hold on our roster until they are signed.

I also am going to assume the proposed Lamar trade goes through where we take back no salary. This leaves our cap space looking like this:

I left the salary cap at $58,000,000, which is the minimum it can be next year. I have heard it is going up or down, so I am going to just leave it as is for now. So in case you are not good at math, we could not have afforded Deron without trading away Zeller unless we made a subsequent move. If that $839,116 is still on the books, we would have to make another trade before signing Deron. I personally think it is important to be able to say "we can sign you to the max right now Deron", rather than "we can sign you if we make one more move". So the moral of the story is we are in position and now it's up to Deron.

In the words of Dirk: Shut it down. Let's GO HOME!