Despite boasting the third youngest roster in the league, the Suns currently sit a half-game a head of the Oklahoma City Thunder for 8th place in the West. The Suns may not make the playoffs, but they are teeming with young assets, just waiting for a superstar to become available. If all else fails, though, they could just sign one with all that cap space...right?

Let's find out.

Some prerequisite information:

Salary cap - we'll assume that the league does not choose to "smooth" the salary cap and increase it significantly this season, in order to avoid an enormous leap once the new TV deal kicks in in 2016. Instead, we'll go with a projected salary cap of $66.5 million (via grantland.com).

Cap holds - None of our free agents are coming off their rookie deals, so all cap holds are either 150% of their current salary (if above the league average salary of $5.62 million) or 190% of their current salary (if below the league average). This will come in handy later.

We'll start by looking at what we have so far.

Guaranteed salaries for next season (via hoopshype.com):

For a total of $52.65 million in pure salary.

Cap holds:

That gives us a total of $80.05 million committed, which is $13.55 million over the cap - and we haven't even signed anyone yet.

That means we have to cut the dead wood, because it isn't worth going that for over the cap for a team that isn't contending for a championship. We have to renounce Green's cap hold, and likely Wright's as well.

It might also make sense to dump Reggie Bullock and Zoran Dragic without taking any salary back (to the 76ers for a 2nd rounder, perhaps?) considering that they're racking up fairly expensive DNP-CDs...when they manage to get on the bench in the first place.

So...

Guaranteed salaries for next season:

Eric Bledsoe - $13.5 million

Markieff Morris - $8 million

Isaiah Thomas - $6.91 million

PJ Tucker - $5.5 million

Marcus Morris - $5 million

Alex Len - $3.81 million

Miles Plumlee - $2.1 million

TJ Warren - $2.0 million

Zoran Dragic - $1.76 million

Tyler Ennis - $1.66 million

Reggie Bullock - $1.25 million

Archie Goodwin - $1.16 million

Cap holds:

Goran Dragic - $11.25 million

Brandan Wright - $9.5 million

Gerald Green - $6.65 million

That brings us down to $60.88 million - still a large amount, but low enough to give us $5.62 million in cap space.

Unfortunately, $5.62 million does not get you very far in today's free agent market; it's not enough to get a legitimate upgrade at a starting position.

So now what?

We must go deeper.

Let's look at our starting lineup - we have an elite backcourt in Dragic and Bledsoe; there's no need to make any changes there. We have a good-to-great frontcourt in Markieff and Len. We could make improvements there, but those two are still young and improving, so it's probably best to let them develop and see how far they can take us.

That leaves PJ.

There's a decent crop of free agent SFs this year: LeBron James (player option), Kawhi Leonard (restricted), Goran Dragic , Jimmy Butler (restricted), Luol Deng (player option), Jeff Green (player option), Tobias Harris (restricted), and Danny Green (unrestricted).

In my eyes, all of those guys would be upgrades over PJ, but all of them are more or less pipe dreams. LeBron isn't leaving, Kawhi is an unlikely target, Butler probably wants to re-sign, Deng probably won't opt out, Jeff Green won't want to leave a good situation in Memphis, Harris is restricted, and Danny Green won't want to leave.

Still, we'll irrationally continue.

Considering age, Kawhi, Butler, and Harris are the best options for our team, but they would all require max contracts. A max salary is defined as 25% of the salary cap for a player with 6 or fewer years of NBA experience (which applies to each of these three), so their max contracts would all be an average of $16.63 million per season, or 4 years, $66.5 million over the length of the deal.

We can, however, backload the contract with maximum raises of 4.5% per year. Since these raises are not compounded annually (i.e. one adds 4.5% of the first year of the contract to get the value of the following year, not 4.5% of the previous year of the contract), this is pretty simple to work with mathematically.

x + 1.045x + 1.09x + 1.135x = 66.5

4.27x = 66.5

x = 15.57

So the starting salary on a 4-year backloaded max contract this offseason would be $15.57 million. With a projected $5.62 million in cap space, we would have to cut $9.95 million to have enough space for a max contract.

With the strengths of the team in mind, it would make most sense to get rid of Isaiah Thomas and PJ Tucker to get that space. However, as Kawhi, Butler, and Harris are all restricted free agents, it becomes more tricky.

If Ryan McDonough calls one of those team's GMs and says, "look, we're going to give [player] a max contract, so why don't you just take Isaiah, Tucker, and a 1st rounder right now and sign-and-trade him over to us?", would they say yes?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

The moral of the story is, however, that we don't have nearly as much cap flexibility as one might think. Just to have enough space to sign a max free agent such as Kawhi Leonard, Jimmy Butler, or Tobias Harris, we would have to get rid of the following players: Isaiah Thomas, PJ Tucker, Brandan Wright, Gerald Green, Reggie Bullock, and Zoran Dragic.

Worth it? I'd say so. Our window for signing free agents shrinks every season, as we have to hand out extensions to our myriad of young players. We would still have around $20 million in cap space when the new TV deal kicks in even if we signed a max player this offseason, so I think we have to pull the trigger if we can.

That trigger isn't nearly as flexible as one might think, though.