[Feigen] Fertitta disputes idea Rockets used the Trade Deadline to get under the Luxury Tax

heyp, just to clarify your chart, the Rockets "only" gave up their 2019 first rounder, 2020 second rounder (which was already partially traded/made less attractive in the Onuaku deal) and 2022 second rounder.

The 2021 Milwaukee second rounder was immediately sent to the Pacers in the Stauskas/Baldwin salary dump. (As I noted on Twitter at the time, you can essentially look at that trade as being part of the Knight/Shumpert trade. By doing it as two separate trades, however, the Rockets managed to get a couple of $1.5M TPEs out of it as well. Not great, but better than nothing.)

Still, you know how much I hate giving up second rounders.

[EDIT: Also, just to be clear, the Rockets got the 2021 second rounder swap rights from Philly in exchange for James Ennis. Not the other way around. Hence, the Rockets did get "positive value" for Ennis and did not need to sacrifice assets to dump him. Now, that "positive value" may not have been very positive -- and may end up being nothing, as Philly could have a worse pick than Houston in 2021 -- but it is at least possibly positive.]

Overall, I think I fall somewhere on the spectrum on all of this between [Corrosion and you] and Clutch. I totally get why the Rockets made these moves, and they very well may have long-term benefits. But (like everyone else) I found that Tilman "doeth protest too much" about the luxury tax not being an issue and would've been better served just admitting that they wanted to duck the tax this year. FWIW, I think Tilman went on record just prior to the trade deadline that, while he was willing to pay the luxury tax, he didn't want to pay it in one of the next three years, which clearly indicates that he was well aware of the repeater tax issues he would face in 2021-22 if he didn't duck the tax at least once before then.

I am going to give Tilman the benefit of the doubt for now. But if a willingness to (responsibly) pay the luxury tax isn't shown next season, I will not be a happy camper.

 

Nobody thought we were getting AD. The response to that was more of the floodgates to trades are opening. This disaster goes back 2 years. We flipped every asset during Morey's tenure. Morey was famous for doing it to get Harden. The only asset we never flipped for TWO YEARS was Ryno. Morey didn't want to pay the up front price for his mistake and it was fatal. He would have had two years of positive assets to flip, recycle, and recover and we wouldn't have been in the position we were of not having the right assets. Repeatedly, Morey mentioned prices in trades he was not willing to pay. This is a pattern. We see all kinds of BS trades wondering why the other team got lucky. Morey's inaction for close to two years doesn't just get ignored when he fails at his final attempt. It's the opportunity cost that you keep missing. It's not delusional, it's a fact. The people telling you this now were the same optimistic people that believed Morey had a plan. In fact, he had nothing. He squandered repeated opportunities waiting for the perfect deal. Great is the enemy of good. We needed flipping Morey that could dump a sunk cost quickly and move on. Instead we got ego EOY Morey and TF. The bill always comes due. BTW, everyone on this board would kill right now for a Tobias Harris. A lot of us were as optimistic as anybody but you have to be honest and objective. I still have hope for THIS season and still love the Rockets. I'm just not blind to stupidity when I see it. We have run out of disgruntled players that we can snag out of desperation. Really, what is the next target that is supposed to fix all of our problems? BTW, Philly got Harris because Butler is leaving. They wanted a consolation prize as insurance. In return, they pissed away all of Hinkie's assets but at least they did SOMETHING.

 

The davis situation was an example of how much it costs to get talks starting. Do we have a tatum?or even a jaylen brown?

No one knows if butler is leaving. Harris is them going all in.

Also, while tobias harris would have been nice, you are saying we would have had enough to beat out every other team with our picks and an expiring and that he would make the difference we need. Harris is a poor defender. Durant cooks him. He doesnt really move the needle much.

 

Wrong, none of the other trades we were interested in were an AD situation. They were players that were had for assets we could have obtained. Again, we failed to convert Ryno into a usable asset to combine with picks. This goes back two years, not just the last minute. We didn't want to pay to get rid of Ryno which was always a two or three step process that we delayed and ultimately did over the summer getting equally unusable pieces. Morey kept stalling this process telling us he had something better. He didn't. Do you think it's any coincidence that the Shumpert trade happened immediately after they confirmed the fallout of the JGreen trade. Morey had several of these lined up for months. He knew the prices out there for a LONG time. If he went to the store two years ago (BEFORE Ryno was a negative asset) and paid that price and had one or two quality rotational players minus two 1sts he would have had a ton more leverage and still had the remaining picks to use. If you look at all of these trades that is what they came down to in the end. He valued winning picks over winning players until it was too late. In the meantime, the NBA began to learn from him and devalued non high lottery picks. Morey could operate the way he did in the early days of Harden because he was building a team. He never fully switched over to the desperation needed with our OLD team. For as many missteps as OKC had they appeared to find a way to fight through them and get things done. We marvel over finding gems in the trash. I love getting lucky with Green, Rivers, and Faried over the last two years but that was supposed to be in addition to... not instead of. Do we even know if a 4yr deal was offered to Ariza? Ariza at $15M was still perfectly tradeable for other teams. At some point the collection of mistakes mounts when you throw away one opportunity after another. We could have still had all of these pieces and traded away others, except when you carry around a dead weight.

 

@luckyman76

I don't know who you are talking to dude (I prolly have them on ignore)

But ain't no one gonna read those walls of text

 

All right, now you’re talking about signing Trevor Ariza for $15 million. Honestly, what are you upset about? Because that seriously won’t make any difference to get the top teams in the NBA. Having Trevor Ariza on the floor won’t change much. He is not much better than the other players we have available to use.

 

Seriously, this ain’t the movie Hoosiers. Guys like Trevor Ariza do not change much. You can’t outhustle some of the talented teams when you just don’t have the talent on the floor itowin.

 

Apparently that rule has been changed and you can trade picks in back to back years …. just have to wait for the start of the new league year.

 

I'd be more in your camp on this if these moves didn't hamstring their ability to "Add to" the current team rather than being forced to part with an EG or Tucker to "add". We'll have a clearer picture when / if they retain Shumpert - I'll be much less critical if they do retain him as it leaves them a bit more flexibility next season and makes parting with an EG more acceptable.

Having only 8 players under contract , three of those not rotation players and glaring holes in the roster - sure we have hopes for Hartenstein and Clark & Nene will be a smallish expiring and having the T-MLE (that they may or may not spend) , I just see it as very difficult to put a better team on the court than they have now with no financial mechanisms to add salary without giving up a rotation piece in the process and having Knight's contract allowed you to do just that and kept your #1 pick to boot.

Curious what you think the chances of retaining Faried and Rivers next season with their non bird figures ? I think its possible Faried takes that but highly doubt Rivers does …. but keeping one or both at that cost goes a long way towards building the roster next season.

How do you see next years roster shaping up ? (yeah I know its way early but I feel like that kinda highlights the consequences of this trade).

Any thoughts on the House situation ?

 

I understand the whole idea of not finding anyone worthwhile to go over the luxury tax this year so save it for next year to delay the chance of a repeater tax. But I don’t understand how moving forward Morey even plans to go into the luxury tax for anyone. Is he going to keep trying his method of attaching 4 future picks with a contract? That strategy is most likely not going to work. And EG’s value is decreasing by the day almost to the point where he would just be viewed as an expiring. Only other contract worthwhile is Capela’s. Unless you’re getting AD for him, you’re not gonna improve trading him.

 

I know I'm not BIMA , but maybe we don't need to add too much if we can manage to keep 2 of House , rivers , and Farried .

Think about how different this year could have been if we'd have started off the year with THAT depth .

If you keep those it's then you don't mind doing a 1 for 1 (i.e. Upgrading Gordon's spot)

Same if they keep shumpert . I think they have shumperts rights ... so if the timing works out they can for sure keep him . But , if he gets offers early in FA then we might be hesitant to lose flexibility

Maybe Morey came to grips with the idea that he's not going to be able to entice anyone with Gordon / knight and 1sts anyways ... at least not for a star caliber player .

As for the House situation in in favor of using the MLE (or him caving ) to a 3 year deal . I think worst case scenario (for this year) we don't convert and we automatically get him on a 2-way again next year .... not sure this is true would like confirmation @BimaThug

But I also think that we can use the MLE to lock him up this year and it doesn't effect the amount we can put towards rivers and farried next offseason (also not sure )

If that's the case then I value the cost controlled asset over LT ramifications a few years from now .

One thing for sure , This offseason is gonna be as tense as the regular season has been

 

Oh, I agree with you on all this. That’s why I’m on the “you” side of Clutch on the spectrum. Just maybe not quite as negative as you are. But like you, I am concerned how these latest moves affect our team-building over the next 2-3 seasons.

 

I find it funny people , especially the media talking about how it's good to avoid the tax aren't talking about the consequences down the line in terms of roster building.
No one else has been looking at next year and what they can / cant do Vs what they could have done minus this trade. The narrative's been about "right now" and avoiding the tax being a good thing.

They'll be looking back later …. wondering how we got here.

I also don't think any of this is "Typical Morey" … it's all been so out of character for a guy who flips assets for a nickel here and a dime there to suddenly change course so drastically and throw assets away.

 

It's also out of character for him to make so many screw ups...

after his disaster of an off season, he had to find some way to ingratiate himself to his new boss - and that was getting below the lux tax...

he got damn lucky that Rivers and Faried fell into his lap at cut rate prices or he'd be in a world of hurt with what the roster would be otherwise... coupled with the injuries...

Prob why he's he's so desperate to try to turn the House situation into a win with a cheap 3 year commitment - rather than just garnering the benefit of converting him and getting whatever he could contribute this year... otherwise, add waiving House to sign Clark to a reg contract to his list of blunders this season...

 

Is it the first time person in a position lies? They usually lie even when they don't have to, especially when they have to cover their ass

 

I was thinking it was much simpler than that - He had marching orders.

 

I have a simple reason why we took the salary dump this yr. it might not be real valid but in chess you play the man not the peices. That being said, Morey chose to go under the tax now because this was to help us extend our contenting window but I think that is only part of it. We all know GSw is what stands in our way, and because they have a few free agents this offseason and will be strapped to make moves this off season. I think morey took a calculated risk to sort of give a half foot in approach for this season. Gsw next year will not be as good as they are this year. Therefore we will go all in this off season.

 

Great post!

 

Again, excellent....

Toss in our health issues...

Suck it up folks, we'll get there.

 

Yes clearly they are thinking Boogie won’t be in GS next year and perhaps Durant or Klay will be gone. Makes sense. But they are gambling that a capped out team with only 6 rotation players under contract, a steeply declining 2nd star who is untradable and less assets than ever can actually improve itself.