Extending the deadline at a cost of $500K is not a bad deal.
The luxury tax is at $132,627,000.
If we cut JR then we are at $123,734,282 with his guarantee.
Assuming we sign Garland, Windler, and Porter to their max rookie slots then it is $6,400,920 for Garland, $2,035,800 for Windler, and $1,936,440 for Porter.
That's $134,107,442 with no further moves, so we're in the tax if we just sign our rookies.
Now we have all season to move OUT of the tax. If you trade Clarkson for assets that total less than his salary, etc then you trim money off that.
We have five ending deals. I don't see them all getting flipped for future salary. I think maybe two will be. We could move other guys and swap out for fits on playoff teams. Let's say Denver would like to flip Plumlee for Tristan for a playoff run (they'd need to include one of their younger, low dollar assets in the deal to make it work) and they want to ship off a future draft pick or even a pick in the upcoming draft (which should fall in the 20s). In this case you could get a young asset that could grow like a Vanderbilt plus a late first while still maintaining cap flexibility AND saving money to get out of the tax.
If Orlando is in the mix, I could also see them moving Mozgov's deal for something that could help them in the short term for a run.
So if a great deal is there that makes it worth paying then you do it. I'd also love to try to get our picks back from NO in some way and could see Griff liking guys on our roster, especially since they could help grow a guy like Zion. So Tristan could be an option in a trade there for instance.
I don't expect Smith to be traded at this point, but I think Koby wanted to keep his options open.
I could also see a team with leftover cap space being intrigued by Clarkson's bench scoring ability. It's a question of if they'd part with good assets.