In response to another post from u/schwockem about how we keep the young core intact since this was way too long as just an individual comment

Here is a rough estimate assuming that all of our top picks plus Sengun all need to be maxed out.

Sengun: rookie max extension at 25% of cap during 2024 summer. Should be 270/5 in total. Similar to Any and Lamelo extensions.

Jalen Green: RFA during 2025 summer. 25% of cap.

Jabari Smith: RFA 2026 summer. 25% of cap.

*Tari Eason: RFA 2026 summer 14% of cap if Houston wants to stay below the first tax apron and retain Brooks for the last year of his contract. I don’t think Tari will get 25% of cap from anyone but 14% could be a bit low. Lots of variables here between how much Tari earns (probably 14% to 19%), whether or not Houston wants to duck the first tax apron etc…

Amen Thompson: Rookie max extension summer 2026. 25% of cap

This gets us to an “optimistic” figure of 126.7% of cap which is highest amount that can be given that the goal is to duck the first apron and our roster would only have our first five young players plus Brooks. Even if one of the core 4 rookies were to come in at 20% as opposed to 25%, we could fill out the bench. But given that we’re assuming all these guys hit their real ceiling, then we just let go of Tari and let Brooks off the books during 2027 summer.

Cam Whitmore: Either traded or let go during RFA, probably the former during summer 2027.

Team for 2027-2028 is:

PG: Amen

SG: Jalen

SF: ?

PF: Jabari

C: Sengun

Possible Bench: Tate, Nets picks, cheap veteran deals

This gets them to 100% of cap, but that doesn’t matter because most teams operate over cap anyway, so they would have another 26.7% of the cap to figure out their depth.

Now all this assumes that we see every single young guy hit their real ceiling and that the team isn’t interested in going over the first apron. If guys like say Jalen or Jabari end up commanding 20% of the cap rather than 25% or maybe the team is willing to put the franchise over first apron, then we can we can keep all six of the young guys.

Edit: I totally forgot about the MLE. Right now that is worth $10.49M today. I imagine it will increase over time. Probably doesn’t change how many young guys we can keep in this scenario, but it lets us play around in FA for a rotational SF. Also I think that money can be spread across multiple players. Regardless, the MLE would really help our depth in this scenario