We cannot create cap space by trading 1 player

I keep seeing people with the mistaken impression that we can trade Holiday or Evans or Ryno and then have their salary available in cap space. That's not how it works. That's not how any of this works. To have cap space you have to be below the cap, not just with current contracts but also with cap holds, like Asik's, and you have to give up exceptions, like the MLE and BAE.

TL;DR we have $80 Million in cap commitments (including exceptions we'd want to use, holds for Bird Rights, and even assumes we can cut and then resign guys like Babbitt and Withey to the minimum) That's $12.3 million over the projected $67.7 million salary cap, so even dumping Gordon's $15.5 million doesn't do much to create cap space.

Dumping Gordon and letting Asik walk puts you about $22 million under the cap, but you now have $22 million to replace 2 starters and you just lost the exceptions you were going to use to keep Ajinca/Cunningham and add a wing like Gerald Green/Mike Dunleavy/Jae Crowder.

Unless the incoming FAs are perfect fits/significant upgrades, I'm not sure we target any that we can't trade for. Creating cap space to sign them is giving up Vasquez and Lopez to sign Tyreke all over again and I hope Demps has learned his lesson from that.