How is Dragic a unrestricted free agent after the season?

This makes sense, player on the cusp of being starters etc, will probably have to settle for those types of deals a lot more, far fewer MLE's being thrown around for the Trevor Ariza types of the world.

Dragic however is at the most important spot on the floor and he has been highly productive, some team might take a shot on him and over pay for a 3 year deal...

3 years is not a long time to lock in a player or to take a shot, it used to be 6, but with 3, that is a lot easier risk to take.

DD

 

Weren't the Nets reportedly offering a lot of money?

 

That's what would make sense. Either take a big one year contract or settle for something lower with a longer duration.

 

Perhaps, but who's to say Morey didn't think he was a value at that number? When has Morey overpaid for anyone when handing out a contract?

 

Morey doesn't overpay. That part of the GM game I have complete confident in him. But the other side of the coin is that perhaps he is too conservative and misses out some talent that we could have had.

I think it comes down to talent evaluation and projection. Everything comes down to that for team building. It's not an exact science, even with all the advanced metrics in his disposal. The recent results of TWill, Lin, and Dragic just show that Morey's talent projection is far from perfect. It's all from hindsight, of course. But you can only judge a GM's decisions from hindsight, right?

That said, I still rate him as one of the best GMs in the league.

 

Was there any player we didn't get because Morey refused to pay him the big bucks? If anything, Morey seems willing to pay more than most clutchfans would. He was willing to pay Melo $20+mil, Bosh the max, Brad Miller $5mil/yr, Gasol for $19mil, and rumors has it Nene for a huge contract.

The only player I can think of that he wasn't willing to overpay was Aaron Brooks. Not sure why that would matter to anyone, especially given how the trade worked.

 

Exactly. Morey has been careful not to pay for players whose "market value" will not equal their true value to the Rockets in building a championship contender (Artest, Brooks, Battier).

Goran Dragic's free agency will be the first test of Morey's calculation in building a championship team when it comes to deciding whether to re-sign a critical YOUNG member of the rotation who hits unrestricted free agency.

It was definitely a positive sign to retaining Dragic when the Rockets chose not to trade him for a future draft pick at the deadline.

DD, while I don't quite share your (and others') enthusiasm for Dragic as a potential franchise player (for all he's done in his 14 starts, in his 38 games off the bench this year he's only put up 7.1 ppg and 3 apg on 42% FG and below 26% from 3), I do acknowledge your point about "CAP SPACE" not being valuable if there's no one on which to spend it.

IF (and it's a big "if") the Rockets view Dragic as worth the price he'll command in unrestricted free agency--even though Morey's said repeatedly that unrestricted free agents almost always get overpaid--then I can see them "paying up" to retain him.

I'm just not convinced that Dragic is worth it.

He's playing great. But 14 games does not a career make. Like others have said, Kelvin Cato also had a pretty good run at the right time.

Here's hoping that Dragic proves me utterly wrong, leading the Rockets into the playoffs and hopefully deep into them. (If Lowry and Martin can get healthy by the end of this month, I think the Rockets will be a very dangerous team with the Goran Dragic we're seeing now.)

 

Dragic? We're talking about this guy in this thread. How much Morey is willing to pay him in the offseason remains to be seen. Like I said, Dragic could have been extended earlier. But Morey didn't want to be tied up and missed a golden opportunity to lock up a valuable asset.

 

All you need is one sucker and, just like that, Dragic will be gone. I think the price will be too high to keep him. If he is gone in the summer, I won't even hate him for it, guys like him are just looking for their payday.

 

Dragic didn't look like anything worth being extended before these last 15 games.

 

Was there a report that said Dragic wanted long term security and Morey said no? I don't remember such like I did when Aaron Brooks pouted.

If anything, based on the fact that teams have tons of cap room this offseason and pretty crappy FA market, I'd think Dragic's agent would want to test the market. I see no reason why Dragic would settle for pittance from the Rockets at backup-PG numbers when he can probably find a starting job elsewhere.