Why Morey is right...we should never extend any contracts

conley getting 45 mil is a joke
even dudley getting an extension is a joke.

 

Just because someone else will pay you doesn't mean you're not overpaid. Before Odom re-upped, he was overpaid bigtime. Now with his new deal, i think he's underpaid for what he brings to a team. Rashard lewis is overpaid, but that doesn't mean he's not a good player or was a good player.

I don't know how old you are, but do you remember when lexus and infinit came out in 89? At the time, they were 35k and were competing with the mb sel and bmw 735's. The advantage they had was those cars were costing 20-30 more than the souped up toyota and nissan. You could get everything and the build quality for 20k less. Well, you know what happened? They put a huge dent and carved out a huge chunk of that market. After they really got rolling, they also forced bmw and mercedes to come down in the mid sized market. Go check the price on a lexus gs,bmw 5,mb e class,and audi a6. The german carmakers have dropped their price to compete with the lexus and infiniti because lexus and infinit set the market. They set the market with their value in price and the amenities given and stole alot of those customers. I'm willing to say off the top of my head that you see more lexus gs than you see 5 series or e-class especially in houston. I know you may think there is no correlation, but i look at it like any other business. Your philosophy can't be in stone and say we will let the market set when dealing with players. Being proactive can save you alot of money.

 

Overpaying for a player is not a bad contract. A bad contract is paying big money and the guy isn't playing or is a bum. Deng's contract isn't killing chicago because he's a good player. Hinrich contract was hurting because he was hurt and flatlined as a player. Even then, they traded hinrich. AK-47's was overpaid or seems like a bad contract because he went into the tank and have been hurt alot. If AK could have stayed healthy and kept producing his all star type numbers, no one would say a word. I mean, there are maybe 5-7 max type guys in the entire league. Then there are guys around the 10-12m range, then 7-10m whcih is where most of the player fit,4-7m guys and sub 4m guys to me. Now let me say, this is my opinion only. A good,notch below all star caliber guy is in the 7-10m range. those are the guy who may make 1 all star game or 2 in their career or mentioned as an all star.To me, scola,brooks,and martin are in this range.

 

Every player can be traded regardless of the contract. Ben wallace and antonio davis were making 16m and were traded. Reaf was making 12 and was traded. There is no such thing as untradeable. The rockets couldve traded tracy the year before they traded him,but the nets wanted brooks and landry. There is no such thing as untradeable in the nba.

 

And if you extend or oversign the wrong guys, you get Isiah.

 

If Morey had Lebron or Wade or Durant, he'd extend them in a nanosecond despite any "risk" involved.

In the end, Superstar = extend. Non-superstar = wait-and-see.
The Rockets have no superstar.

 

The only thing that kills a franchise is the overload of bad contracts and injuries. I lewis killing orlando right now? What about robinson making 10m per his last couple of years in Sa? Portland had 4 max contracts, did it kill them? Not to mention, they drafted oden #1. You can always get value in a trade if you know what you're doing . Let me give you this. The rocket traded francis,mobley,cato and a pick or something for mcgrady,gaines,lue,and howard. Francis still had 3 yrs or so on a max,mobley had 2 yrs, and cato had a couple of years. 1 yr later, orlando traded mobley for christie who was washed up,francis for penny and his 20m deal in the last year, and cato for darko. In 1 swoop, they went from capped out to 20 in cap room and they went and got lewis. Those were bad contracts and they got from under and didn't kill their franchise.

 

We've gone the bad contract route before and it sucked.

Letting Scola hit the market was not bad for us. We weren't going to extend him for 7 mil/yr, he's been a beast for years. A 16/9 big man (20/10 after Landry got traded) does not come cheaply. Meanwhile, Memphis gets lauded for giving Conley the same $40 million contract after three games?

If Brooks gets a ridiculous contract from some desperate team we can simply match and deal with it then. No point in giving him a ridiculous contract from the get go. That's just r****ded.

 

I DONT CARE WHAT IS RIGHT FOR THE ROCKETS OR ASSETS MANAGEMENTS! AARON BROOKS IS A PEOPLE AND PEOPLE HAVE FEELINGS! WHY CANT MOREY HAVE BETTER PEOPLE MANAGEMENT SKILLZ?!

But seriously, great work in this thread trugoy.

As for the other side of the argument and "people management", there is such thing as "professionalism". Especially for supposed "professionals" being paid millions a year to play a freakin' game. If Yao and Battier have no problem with it, Scola and Lowry had no problem with it last year, then Aaron Brooks can sit his ass in line too.

 

No risk, no championship.

 

I agree totally with this thread. Whether its the Rockets policy or not I still would not have extended Aaron Brooks' contract this year anyways. His true value should be determined at the end of this year. He is definitely due for a pay increase but there is still no guarentee on what kind of player he can be for a franchise long term.

 

Stability wins championships more than horsetrading.

I think the policy has worked in some cases like Landry, and not worked in others like Scola and Lowry...where they had to, IMO, overpay to keep them.

If you value a player, you can make a decent offer to them, and if they don't accept then it was their choice......

Simply saying "We do not do extensions" is a poor people policy and it does have a mental effect on the players.

Except when they are expiring like Tmac, and Kwame Brown though, right?

So they do have value.....

DD

 

That's only true because horses make very mediocre basketball players. People on the other hand...

2010 Lakers Ariza for Artest
2009 Lakers Pau Gasol
2008 Celtics Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen
2006 Heat Shaq

Looks like 4 of the past 5 champions got there due to some sort of peopletrading. Maybe the rest of the league should take cue and stop trading the wrong species.

I think you are missing the whole point of a very well written and thought out OP. There is no advantage in extending players the caliber of Landry, Scola, Lowry or Brooks. Worst case scenario you retain them by match an oversized offer from another team. But even then, you are not necessarily "overpaying", since there is a guaranteed market out there for the player(from the team that offered the contract in the first place).

On the other hand, if you extend them yourself, you run the risk that you are the ONLY team to value them at XX price. In that case, if you are wrong in your player valuation, there is NO market to dump them on, locking up the team's flexibility indefinitely.

It only has a mental effect on mentally weak players. We will BREAK them.

 

And this doesn't have a mental effect on the players? If Morey offers him a 7 million offer and he rejects it, he plays all season knowing he's a goner. It would be better?

When your policy is to negotiate, not only you can find cases like this, but you are also forcing yourself to negotiate with every player in such situation. You're giving the players (your current and future players) power of negotiation.

-Scola and Lowry are not overpaid, they could be traded tomorrow if Morey wanted.-