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Find one or two sacrificial lambs, preferably the guys with the highest salary loads going forward (which likely means your best), and trade them for prospects. Use the cash this frees up to sign your remaining stars to contract extensions, and start cultivating your minor system to provide replacements as (hopefully before) your stars age.
This may not work, but give it a try. See if you can get by with only letting one guy go, then bump to two if you have to. An alternative to cutting the guy with the biggest salary commitment is to get rid of the two (not likely to be one in this case) oldest of your budget busters in the hopes that you can keep the more youthful core together longer.
Third alternative would be to keep the ones who are signed to the longest contracts and trade off the ones closest to free agency,since you likely won't be able to afford to keep them, anyway. The obvious problem with that strategy is that you're not likely to get much (if anything) in return. This works better if you do it with a newly created league shortly before the trading deadline in midseason. That way you get 2/3 of a season of work from them, but can still exchange them for cheap young players to help you next season. Maybe you could trade them for multiple draft picks, but keep in mind that if the team you're trading with would have a pick in the first half of the first round, you'll probably lose out on it. (The game will tell you that you traded for it, but still leave it with its original team.)
please write back and tell us how this worked out.
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