Surely it'd be a challenge, but if the Miami Heat want to be competitive during the 2019-20 NBA season, trading for veteran point guard Chris Paul is definitely an answer.
After signing-and-trading for four-time All-Star swingman Jimmy Butler, the Heat are “hard-capped” following the dried ink of Butler's four-year max contract. That makes trading for a max-level player in Paul especially difficult, but beyond the salary cap technicalities, it's a part of the business of basketball that must be done to make the team relevant again.
Miami finished the season four games under .500 last year, missing out on the playoffs—a postseason in which they only reached two in the past five seasons since the LeBron James era, and haven't made it to the conference finals in that span either. A roster at the top headlined by Butler, Goran Dragic, Justise Winslow, and Bam Adebayo isn't going to cut it.
Paul, 34, was traded by the Houston Rockets to the Oklahoma City Thunder with picks for former league MVP Russell Westbrook, reuniting the 2012 Finals teammates Westbrook and James Harden in Houston. There's speculation about whether the Thunder want to keep the 6'0″ point guard on the team and attempt to compete now with Steven Adams, Danilo Gallinari, and more on the roster, but it looks like OKC is in its first, true rebuilding mode since relocating from Seattle, Washington, a decade ago.
Moving Paul would be at the top of the Thunder's list of priorities. Paul is due to earn $38.5 million next season, per Early Bird Rights, and his contract extends into the 2021-22 season, when CP3 can exercise his player option worth $44.2 million.
With Miami hard-capped, the Thunder must take more salary than Paul's contract so the Heat can avoid the luxury tax. To add gas to the salary cap fire, OKC is looking to avoid the repeater tax, too.
What would the Heat have to give up to acquire Paul, though?
They'd likely have to cut bait with a few top earners like Dragic and Winslow or James Johnson. Dragic, due to make $19.2 million, was rumored to be heading to the Dallas Mavericks to complete the Butler deal. The Portland Trail Blazers and Los Angeles Clippers would later come into the picture to work out the kinks in the sign-and-trade with Philly, but Dragic could very well be out the door for the Heat.
To exceed Paul's $38.5 million, some combination of Dragic, Winslow, Kelly Olynyk, and Dion Waiters or Johnson could be created as a package heading to OKC. An issue, however, mentioned earlier, is the Thunder want to avoid a repeater tax, so one solution could be adding picks to the deal from Miami to entice Sam Presti's Thunder to go over the cap again. The Heat agreed to send their 2021 first-round pick to the Phoenix Suns at the 2015 NBA trade deadline in the deal that brought Dragic to South Beach. Ironically, that pick has found its way heading to OKC. Thus, the Thunder are likely unable to trade its future first-round pick ahead of time in consecutive years.
In that case, to entice the Thunder to take on more salary than its cutting by trading Chris Paul, the Heat would have to send, along with the combination of players discussed above, future picks like multiple second-rounders because, due to league technicalities, Miami can't liberally trade another first-round pick until 2025.
PROPOSED TRADE
- Oklahoma City sends: Point guard Chris Paul (2019-20 salary: $38,506,482), right to 2020 second-round pick swap
- Miami sends: Point guard Goran Dragic (2019-20 salary: $19,217,900), center/forward Kelly Olynyk ($12,667,886), and shooting guard Dion Waiters ($12,100,000), 2025 first-round pick
The combination of salaries between Dragic, Olynyk, and Waiters exceeds Paul's salary by nearly $5.5 million. Miami could choose to substitute one of Olynyk or Waiters for multiple players earning less (Derrick Jones Jr. was rumored to be attached with Dragic and Olynyk in the torn-up three-team Butler sign-and-trade with Dallas, for example).
The most obvious result of this experiment, however, is that a Chris Paul to Miami trade will more than likely need a third partner to facilitate the complications in salary exchange, the hard-capped Heat team, and repeater tax avoiders OKC.
The end result, though, is Paul would raise Miami's ceiling instead of solely Jimmy Butler leading the team in a conference dominated by the Milwaukee Bucks, Philadelphia 76ers, and now-Kawhi-less reigning champs Toronto Raptors.
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