[The Athletic] Leroux: Rockets’ Repeater Tax fear more excuse than reality

I know it's behind a paywall but anyone wanna give some snippets or a TL;DR evidence of Tilman being cheap as the article suggests?

 

Tillman = Scrooge mcduck level penny pincher

 

Harden deserves better than a cheap ass owner like Tilman. He really does.

 

I can’t believe the NBA would sell to someone like Tillman when they have so many options.

 

Basically it goes like this:
We are at ground zero right now, so we would need three consecutive years of being a taxpayer before we became a repeater team in the fourth year.
Our currently salary structure makes it pretty easy to duck under one year in the next 4, particularly as that fourth year would be after Paul was gone.

He lays out a convincing argument.

Honestly I think the repeater tax was used as a ploy here. The only way we COULD end up a repeater team is if we add significant long term salary, but we won't do that and the repeater tax will be the excuse used. Unfortunately we can't really get better without adding that salary either.

Dumping Knight's contract does help us avoid the repeater tax, but not really because of being a tax payer team this year, but rather because we won't have it to convert now into a bigger long term deal for a player that would help us. THAT player might have led to the repeater tax.

I know we will get a lot of people who say OH BUT THEY'LL RE-SIGN SHUMP THAT WILL PROVE HOW MUCH THEY WILL SPEND!

Shump, if he is re-signed, will likely be at a discount compared to his current salary. Between he and a tax payer MLE player they'd probably be less combined than Knight was making this year.

 

I have a feeling who the 2019 second round pick is going to be.

Could you ******* imagine that?!?!

 

Someone who pays 2+ billion for something isn't cheap. That said he might have spenders remorse after Morey gave CP3 all that money and so far nothing in return. He might be challenging Morey to find a way out of the mess he created and so far Morey seems (Rivers, Faried, Shump) to be finding ways. CP3 playoff performance along with the new additions will prove if he did or didn't.

 

Great read.

Sad stuff, but it is what it is. This is the Rockets ownership now. Feel bad for James.

 

If Tilman was afraid of the repeater tax, we'd have never offered for Jimmy Butler. There are stars who move us closer to a title and ownership has made it clear they will pursue those players and pay the associated bill.

Apparently they will not pay that bill for small to moderate upgrades, especially if there is talent on the buy out market. (We'll see if they can add additional talent to rivers/faried).

I mean - this is obvious right?

 

What makes it worse is that given Chris Paul's decline going forward, we needed to be MOST agressive THIS year.

We are wasting James Harden prime years.

Dont be fooled by all the mouth pieces for the organization.

Winning is clearly not the top priority.

 

Tillman trying to save money at all cost.

 

Sadly cheap (overly frugal) owners primarily hurts the fans, sucks

That said, I can't tell anyone how to use their money. If an owner doesn't want to be losing money, that is their own perogative.

 

Yeah.

In defense of the team, they WERE aggressive this year.
-Tried to get Jimmy Butler, just struck out
-Tried to trade for Temple/Green but Memphis backed out (That deal would likely have kept them in the tax)

TO me the bigger issue isn't that they weren't aggressive enough this year, it's that by dumping Knight this year they've limited how aggressive they can be in the future as well.

 

Sure that's up for debate. And who qualifies as "worth paying the luxury tax for" is too. I know this question is asked every trade deadline but "who did you want them to get and how should they have gone about it?"

I liked Memphis Green but sounds like the grizz didn't like us back. Also wonder about Codman's post saying we were in discussions for Jaylen Brown (how the hell?)

 

I think Tilman is scared of the Warriors. He doesn't think we can beat them and isn't going to pay luxury tax for 2nd place.

 

That package was traded for an unplayable Avery Bradley and his mostly-expiring $12m contract (only $2m guaranteed next season).

A good question is: does it make any sense that the Grizzlies didn't want Shumpert's expiring $11.5m contract and bird rights, but wanted Avery Bradley's contract (who makes a hair more this season, must be paid/allotted $2m next season and whose career may be over)?

Something is up with this. I'm sure Codman is accurately relaying what he's told through players, but ownership could lie to the players.