(Local media videos)Jazz basically screwed up the whole Cavaliers franchise

The Rockets won 45, 45, and 43 games in three of those years, and had one year when their best player missed most of the season because of migranes. It wasn't that bad.

 

Completely agree with SamFisher. Why is everyone making such a big fuss over Utah. They're locked in for eternity with a team of glorified role players. And please just stop with the whole Detroit Pistons "you don't need a superstar" argument - you're making yourself look stupid. The Pistons would have been crushed had they taken on the Spurs, Kings, or Wolves and had to go through the brutal West.

 

Dead on, I meant to add that in as well.

Kirilenko is a slightly bigger Pippen type, IMO, rather than a (healthy) Grant Hill type. Arroyo is Howard Eisley redux, Okur I've covered, and Boozer is the kind of guy who can prosper down low, like the veteran Otis Thorpe (not the younger 20-10 OT) given a star player to whom he can play second fiddle and draw heat(LeBron), but I'm not sure he's got that in Utah.

They're young, but they have a ceiling. Spin cycle of mid-packness, eternally in the peloton. Plus I think Giricek sucks.

 

I think they'll be a great regular season team, like the Kings, Grizz, Portland, and Dallas, but come playoff time they'll be in trouble. They're still going to be much better than anyone expected them to be. I was looking forward to seeing the Jazz go through countless lottery seasons, but it looks like it'll only be one.

 

Dead on.

WAY off. A healthy (with Cassell, Thud) Wolves might have beat the Pistons. The Spurs offense would have been obliterated by the Pistons and the Kings would have been pounded into submission like the Lakers were by the far more athletic and physical Pistons. Against SA for instance, the Pistons have major advantages in 4 of the 5 starting positions (don't give me Parker is near as tough on opponents and complete of player as Billips) and a much superior better bench, and Sheed and Ben are not bad to throw at Duncan either.

Billips, Hamilton and Sheed give them some options versus just about anybody.

 

That's why as an organization, Rox is inferior to the Jazz organization, but Rox has the better luck, #1 picks, Hakeem and Yao.

 

yes, and always be a thorn on the Rox side by beating the Rox with the smart ball.

 

Utah are a boring team. Utah= parasites,they take from others even their new digs looks like a poor man's dallas digs

 

Evil Empire? In Salt Lake City? You have to be joking.

The 25% signing bonus is the CBA loophole that teams (all teams) are exploiting when signing a RFA to an offer sheet. Simply put, it's a clever way of front loading a contract, making it tough on a luxury taxed team to match (see: half the NBA).

Say you want to sign Boozer for 6 years, 60 million. Normally, that'd start at about 7 million and the 6th year would be worth 13 million. The 7 million is the up front salary cap hit that the Cavs would need to stomach.

So, use the loophole and make it tougher on the original team to match the offer. Give him 48 million for the 6 and slap on a 12 million signing bonus. No one would do this for an unrestricted FA, the hit for year one would be sickening (18 million!).

How can Utah pull this off for both Okur and Boozer? Check out their cap situation; they're nearly 30 million below the cap!!!

Frontloading will happen if the offering team thinks the original team won't be able to match in the first year. It wouldn't be effective, though, to try and frontload someone like Manu. The Spurs are under the cap themselves and could easily take the one-year hit. All it would do would make it tougher for them to go after other FAs.

The one thing I'm not 100% sure on is whether the signing bonus counts against the cap or not.

EDIT: Got it. Signing bonus, as far as the salary cap itself is concerned, is spread over the length of a contract. Team still actually pays it upfront. Year one payout = 18 million. Year one salary cap hit = 7 million.

Evan

 

Even though they did stole Boozer.... I think it will be better in the long for the Cavs. Boozer is a small PF that hustles and rebound in the East. He is ALOT smaller in the WEST. He's good but I think Kenyon Martin would have been a better choice for the Jazz since they had the money. Okur is not exactly a rebounding or shot blocking , intimadator type either. Here is a list of some PFs he will face in the West.

DUNCAN
Garnett
Dirk
Webber
Amare
Pau Gasol
Randoph
J-Howard ( not a bad PF, just overpaid)
Possible K Martin in Denver

First 5 I think will kill Boozer. Next 4 are a lil bit better at this point of their career.

Good job though for Utah since players do not like going there to play.

 

I guess it was also "luck" when the Rockets got Steve Francis, Cuttino Mobley, Clyde Drexler, Otis Thorpe, Sam Cassell, Tracy McGrady, Robert Horry, Charles Barkley, Mario Elie, etc. You don't "accidently" when championships. What has the Jazz organization done that would make you say the Rockets are inferior to them?

 

Wrong, dead wrong. The Rox organization, largely the one that is in place now plus Rudy, has two championships, both of which were won by going through the Jazz.

Call it luck, call it whatever you want, but I'll take that over 15 straight playoff appearances or whatever any day of the week.

Well, our "dumb" team split two games with them this year, and one of the two losses was a meaningless game after the Rox had already cemented their playoff position, not to mention the fact that we owned them in the playoffs in 94 and 95.

I'll take stupid and successful over smart and ringless any day. Would you rather be a fan of Princeton basketball or the early 90's UNLV?

 

That should be "win" championships.

 

Even without the #1 pick the Rockets won 45 games before injuries derailed them. As for the Rockets personel moves not being much better then those teams, the Rockets have TWO losing seasons since 1994, the Rockets have 7 playoff appearances, 3 WCFs and 2 NBA championships. And, while people want to point out a few bad contracts, the Rockets "bad" personel moves include the players I mentioned above.

 

yeah, there are slightly worse rebuilding processes to go through. we essentially lost 4 HOFers for walt williams and kelvin cato (barkley retired, drexler retired, hakeem basically did, and pippen was a POS who lowered his value) and still managed to be a competitive team except for 2 years when injuries absolutely crushed us. actually, we were a playoff-caliber team in any other conference at any other time in nba history (winning 45 and 43 games). that was pretty much all due to the fact that we stole francis (look at what we traded for him, a guy with a career ending injury and a few other guys who were basically never heard from again) and stole cuttino mobley at the 41st pick. neither of those was luck and were the reasons we stayed competitive*. now, we've got a guy with a ton of potential in yao and a 25 year old who is already top 5 in the nba and still have an mle and TE to play around with to improve the roster and plenty of extra years to tweak it after that. i'd say our rebuilding went pretty damn swimmingly compared to teams like the celtics, the pistons for about the first decade after their titles, the bulls so far, and then the nuggets, warriors, clippers, cavs, and all the other perennial cellar-dwellers (among whom only the nuggets have finally figured it out and are actually doing well now).


*as far as luck is concerned. sometimes that's what it takes. how did chicago win 6 titles. having a #3 pick and having portland be stupid and pass up jordan. how did we win our 2? a #1 pick. how did san antonio win their 2? having their star get injured the same year an amazing talent was in the draft, then stealing the #1 pick from about the 5 position in the lottery. actually, that's pretty much exactly how we got yao. orlando used back to back lucky #1's to get to the finals. and finally, jerry west wouldn't seem like such a genius if the most dominant player in the game didn't pretty much decide he was going to LA no matter what other teams bid for him and then on top of that kobe pretty much forced his way to the lakers and west just happened to have a pretty decent center he no longer needed b/c of shaq lying around as trade bait. so as you can see, luck is a huge factor in building a great team. you take it when you can get it.

 

and if it wasn't for the enormous amount of injuries we sustained in those two seasons, we wouldn't have had a losing season going all the way back to 83-84. i'd say being a rockets fan has been pretty good when considering some of the alternatives.

 

When I said "bad personell moves", I meant the post-Olajuwan era. Certainly, I thought we made the right choices in going after Barkley, Drexler, and Pippen(even if this one didn't pan out). Extending things back to the mid-90s certainly make things look better, but if you were to give the Nuggets Olajuwan of mid-90s, they probably won't have too many losing seasons either.

As for those players you mentioned, so what? Many are good role players, and we did a lot of trading. Just because we made many more blockbuster trades than the Jazz doesn't mean we somehow managed to get more great players. If the Jazz traded Malone/Stockton, they'd seemingly have "more" great players throughout the years. Doesn't mean anything.

Sorry, I just can't see how the moves made by this team were all that great. We got a bunch of mediocre players and signed them to big contracts, who along with Francis/Mobley was enough for 40 wins a season. The problem was that the team had NO potential. Meaning you just can't imagine the team eventually progress to championship quality. And we managed to have no capspace with these contracts. It was only with Yao, which we got only because we were not only lucky with the #1 pick, but also the right year. I give the Rockets credit for getting the deal done, but in the end, it was that pick that allowed us to go from a team where the best player was Francis, to a team led by Yao/T-Mac.

I would be shocked if the Jazz don't contend. They play too well together not to. Sloan only gets players that works in his system, and he makes players play better than their normal ability. Just look at what Howard Eisley or Shandon Anderson plays elsewhere. All this in a city where most FAs avoid like the plague, and they have to overpay for talent. Plus the Jazz haven't had a lottery pick since forever before this draft. If the Rockets had such constraints and ended up with the Jazz players/owner, we'd be ecstatic.

 

Sam,

I thought you were a Jazz fan?? Oh, that is what DaDakota says...never mind, carry on...

 

The thinking is that if you puttogether enough GOOD players, you'll later package them in 2-for-1 deals and land yourself some stars.

Just like the Grizzlies and Kings style.


My God the West is LOADED this year. Even with Shaq moving, it's crazy:

Rockets
Spurs
Lakers
Kings
Mavs
Wolves
Jazz
Blazers
Nuggets
Hornets

These are all playoff teams. It's an absolute shame that two of those teams will stay home, most likely the Hornets and Blazers barring major additions.

Only 3 teams are decent in the East: New Jersey, Indiana, Detroit. Throw in Miami if they get Shaq.

 

i hate to say it ,but they have a very good gm