You and MLittle577 are right on the money with this. The trade was a (Jackie Butler) salary dump for the Spurs and they had to give up Scola. Simple as that. I still question them making this trade with a division rival. Scola is good enough to be our starting PF, maybe by the opener, and they are giving a sword to somebody they regularly fight with. To the guy who said this proves V-Span has value, LOL, his value is the fact he WILL NOT play for the Spurs. They don't want him at all. If V-Span were unrestricted, he'd do well to get the vet minimum guaranteed for one year.
One thing that no one mentioned in regards to where Scola gets traded was that the spurs were "letting" teams have a talk with Scola before they traded him to that team, so that the team Scola maybe be traded for can gauge Scola's interest in signing with them. It could have very well happened that the reason the spurs, cavs, kings deal fell apart was that he wouldn't have agreed to sign with Sacto, or any of the other eastern teams that the Spurs may have been trying to trade with. Never know who else had contacted Scola before the rockets came calling. Another reason the spurs wanted save money was that there is talk in SA that they might be trying to sign Splitter with the money they saved with Butler and Vspan.
Let me see if I can explain: - The Spurs were slightly above the Luxuy Tax threshold and that's a bad thing. They wanted to get under. - The way to get under the LT threshold is to dump salary. i.e. send out more salary than you take back. - The common way to dump salary is to trade with a team that either has a trade exception or is under the cap. Either of those would allow SA to send out more salary than they take back. - Getting rid of Butler's contract is enough to get SA under the LT threshold. The problem is that there wasn't anyone left with cap space to take the contract and nobody had a TE close to that size. - Spanoulis' situation was the next best thing and functions just like a TE. SA can send out Butler's contract and take back Spanoulis. Of course, it's well known that VSpan wants no part of the NBA, so SA knew that he'd agree to void out his remaining contract and end up with the Spurs taking back $0 in salary. - Of course, the Rockets weren't going to help out the Spurs for nothing. The rights to Scola were the cost for getting the Rockets to take on Butler's salary. That sounds like a high price, but it saves SA alot of money in LT and as mentioned earlier, Scola was prepared to sign a 5 year deal in Spain which would have rendered his rights worthless to SA. - SA bit the bullet and include the rights to Scola and it got them under the LT threshold, so they saved alot of money.
Actually, I researched all of the players that had salaries around V-span's, and the only other one that could possible be bought out was the Clippers' Yasarka Whateverthehellhislastnameis. Vspan was the only remaining option, all the other teams have good role players on rookie contracts.
Yes there was something special about VSpan's contract, SA could get out of it immediately. An expiring deal wouldn't help them this year. They would have still been over the LT threshold. Now, they can immediately void VSpan's contract and be under the LT threshold. See the difference? An expiring deal still costs them money this coming season. In fact, Butler is an expiring contract. VSpan had the special circumstance that they could dump him immediately. So, yeah you're right that SA probably could have gotten more for Scola, no doubt. But if they had done that then they'd likely be over the LT threshold and it would have cost them somewhere around $7M in LT. So what it came down to is that whatever the Spurs best offer for Scola was, they prefered the $7M savings that VSpan provided.
I think the Scola deal happened because we were so close to the "deadline" when Scola must make a decision on staying in Spain. The Spurs' original plan involved sending Scola to a lesser/eastern team in the 3-way deals discussed, which of course made all sorts of sense. But when those talks broke down, the Spurs were desperate for a trade partner. Given more time, I think they would've found an equal or better offer than th Rockets. In which case there's no need to give him to a potential threat. But they couldn't find anyone else, and decided it was worth the risk for the few millions saved on Butler's contract. In another words, Morey simply got lucky. But the fact that he took advantage of a lucky situation speaks volumes of his ability. It's funny that unlike last season with Battier, Morey has not made single so-called $ball move. All his signings/trades are fairly traditional. I originally thought Brooks was a stat-guy move, but he was clearly just a guy the scouts and Adelman like with the new rules in place.
Right now, under the NBA's balanced scheduling with this two-conference, three-division alignment, teams currently play division rivals four times a season, then other conference opponents three or four times per season while playing the non-conference opponents twice each. If the current NBA scheduling put a heavier emphasis on divisional play, such as teams playing division rivals at least six times per season, I just wonder if the trades involving the Rockets with the division rivals that involved Shane Battier and Luis Scola would have even taken place, let alone the Vernon Maxwell trade that took place 17 years ago. In our other professional sports, since their scheduling puts a heavier emphasis on divisional play, teams trading players to division rivals rarely takes place.
