Will Daryl Morey repeat the mistakes by letting players walk in free agency?

Time Stamped @1:14

 

Teams with a solidified, expensive core have no choice but to operate at the margins; in any sport.

Morey’s mistake was that he initially signed the wrong marginal players , no that he signed marginal players.

 

So you want him to match a 15 million dollar offer to Rivers or Faried?

We sure are missing Luc's 4 GPs this year too...

 

In 2019-2020, just the core of Paul, Harden, Capela, Tucker, Gordon, Nene, Hartenstein and Clark will make $121m. The luxury tax line is expected to be at $132m. Let's dream for a minute and say Tilman will allow the team to spend $142m. That means $21m to fill 7 roster spots.

Let's manipulate this a bit and be optimistic. Say we get 2 2-way players which cost practically nothing and Danuel House at the minimum. We're down to about $19m but only have to fill 4 roster spots.

Now we have Rivers and Faried to retain and the only way we can do that is by using the T-MLE of $5.1m. If they do well in the playoffs, it's impossible to sign both of them. If they play well, each of them is likely to get a $10m/2 deal. If they don't, maybe we squeeze them both into the T-MLE. I don't get the logic of why we would re-sign them if they didn't play well, but fine, that's what most people's dream is about this summer. We're at $14m with 2 roster spots to fill. The truth is, there is no way to retain both these guys if they play well in the playoffs.

We still have 2 roster spots. Let's say we fill them for the vet minimum, signing a couple of guards since our biggest need - an impact forward - is not accessible to us in the FA market. Let's say it's a couple of underwhelming guys like Ben Mclemore and Alec Burks. Now we're down to $11m with 0 spots.

Since this roster is not a contender and we now have overflowing guard depth, maybe we trade Eric Gordon and Nene's expiring contracts plus X number of picks for Aaron Gordon. We are now down to $10m and 1 roster spot. We can now re-sign Shumpert to a deal starting at around $10m or sign and trade him (I believe we have his bird rights) for another defensive wing.

This best case scenario would give us:

Capela/Hart
A Gordon/Faried/Clark
Tucker/Shumpert
Harden/House/Mclemore
Paul/Rivers

+ 2 x 2-way players

If you ask me, I would hold off on signing Rivers and Faried. Looking at that kind of possibility, I would rather give the whole T-MLE to someone who was hoping for a pay day and falls through the cracks (Tyreke Evans? Mirotic? Reddick? Rudy Gay?). Hart and Clark will be players next season imo and if we actually have a strong core like this, THEN it would make sense to target minimum guys to fill marginal roles.

Will be interesting and require luck. I don't consider it impossible that we package Gordon, Capela and picks for a bigger star then fill the C void with DeAndre Jordan at the full T-MLE which imo is a significant downgrade, but worth the upgrade in other areas.

 

good lord, there are still people who think Luc Mbah've only played 60 Mbinutes is an NBA player.

 

Hey, Trevor Ariza is having an MVP season right now. Oh wait, that's Harden. My mistake.

 

Why do you think that it was Daryl Morey's decision?

There are also going to be serious CBA limitations to what the Rockets can and cannot do concerning their own free agents.

 

Who's still wanting Trevor Ariza back at $15 million? Dude is currently shooting 31% from 3 as a Wizard right now.

 

But But MURRAY DO SOMETHING!

 

Make no mistake, Morey knew it was going to be difficult the moment they traded for Chris Paul. There were serious limitations.

However he did not know it would be nearly impossible to move Anderson. He did not know that the owner would not go into the tax and he fully expected that the Rockets could deal Anderson for a useful player OR hold onto him until he was expiring and deal him for a good player.

Instead, Morey has lost draft assets, has no big expiring contract to use to get a good player and he has a bunch of depth that will likely be gone (Faried/Rivers/House) and is hoping that Shumpert is worthy of being resigned.

So we will likely be in a boat similar to this last off season....... the hope is that there is better luck in free agency (someone productive slips to us) or that we are able to (after the draft) trade some of our limited assets for a player that is a 30 minute a game player.

The reality is the Faried and Rivers are both likely gone. Someone else is going to look at Faried dropping 15/10 and are going to give him minutes and more money.

That is why the House situation is so distressing. He looked like a cheap, under control 30 minute a night player. Either Morey doesn't see him that way or the Rockets are really really strapped.

 

It's a strange thought, because if we can afford them both, then it means they didn't play well. If they do play well, they will cost more than a combined $5.1m. If only one of them plays well, it's an easy decision. Still I think there are players who will fall through the cracks this summer at the T-MLE price range who would be better than Faried or Rivers. Let's see how it goes.

 

THANK YOU.

 

Fixed the thread topic for ya, OP:

Will Daryl Morey repeat the "mistakes" by letting players walk in free agency?

 

With House I just think the Rockets are strapped. Obviously Shumpert expires, but other salaries go up. We are capped out lol

 

The most un-Morey-like thing has been the fact that he hasn't amassed enough tradable salary to make a big trade happen next summer.

Maybe they'll give House the remaining MLE (2 year deal, 2nd year team option) on 21st March if a significant buyout candidate doesn't become available. That would be an additional $3.1m to pile onto Nene ($3.8m) and Gordon ($14m) for a total of $21m which can net $24m in trade this summer. Add in Hart ($1.4m) and Clark ($1.4m), you can bump that up to $27.8m. No risk there, all those players are worthy of roster spots at those salaries anyway. For House, loses nothing. Worst case scenario he's on the FA market sooner than he expected, best case scenario he gets $3.1m here or somewhere else.

Meanwhile, make the boss happy and stay under the tax right now. Maybe Morey genuinely fears losing his job if he doesn't improve the bottom line.

 

True, and I blame these two people for that:

 

Disagree with the narrative of a having a bad offseason. We re-signed Clint Capela and Cp3. Those guys were FREE this offseason. We had the right contract, environment, and bball fit to get them. They both got significant increases in salary, as they should given our success last year and future cap projected changes. (you can argue CP3 didnt deserve it, but you are arguing for us not having him). These essential signings throw our cap percentages off quite a bit. Then you have Ariza asking for 15mil (before we even had Paul/Capela locked up). We would have paid him if he asked for a contract that gave the team some flexibility, but he wanted his, as he should.

Morey had a GREAT offseason, and another great regular season. He will do so again this coming offseason.

 

Ryno's contract would have been an excellent expiring to pair with picks this summer. There was never any point trading him, and Melton would be another mediocre young asset for the future. Knight and Chriss were pointless really.

Also, it's on Ryno that he sucked. It's not on Ryno that he was paid $20m/season. That's on Morey. Ryno hasn't been worth that salary for a single season in his life.

 

Replace Tilman with Alexander. He’s the one that green lit the 20 million dollar powerless forward signing