Figured I'd throw in a more plausible FA target than CP3 and Dwight Howard. Iggy has an early termination option coming up. At the age of 29 next year, there's no doubt he'll use it. It will likely cost the Rockets most of their cap money to give him an offer, probably 4yrs/$50-60mil. And if Denver doesn't have success this year despite their depth of talent, I think it's likely they won't do all they can to re-sign him. IMO, benefits of going after Iguodala over any PF option. 1. Banking on one or more of our young PF will develop into at least near-star(Millsap, Prime Scola type). And another will be a solid role player for depth. Morris and Patterson already fit the latter. And they plus DMo/Jones can improve to be the former. 2. Moving Parsons to backup would improve our depth A LOT, and allow him to play a Lamar Odom role as a swiss army knife in terms of substitutions. Also shore up our horrendous depth at the swing positions. 3. Another player to lessen shot-creating duties of Harden, freeing him up to work harder on defense and play off the ball. This is something a free agent PF cannot do. 4. Versatile defender, allowing us to switch more often on defense and play more aggressively. Shore up a huge problem with current play, which is letting mediocre perimeter players kill us. Downside though is that he'll be 29, untradable if his play slips, and has relied heavily on athleticism. He's also been a mediocre jumpshooter, but not detrimentally bad. Unfortunately, there's no 26yr old equivalent of him on the market. I feel if we can see a glimmer of stardom from any of our PFs, this can be a huge signing to catapault us to dark horse contender status. And if our PFs don't show much, there's no point in spending money in FA anyway.
No thank you. I want to make that big step forward. Iggy won't turn us into a title contender and he would hinder our flexibility to make a big move in the future. Patience is the key
I like Iggy - but I think your negatives far outweighs the potential positives. And I'd really like to keep Parsons in as a starter with heavy minutes because he really seems to have all star potential. At some point this season our young PFs will get a chance to show what they can do. If we are confident, that one of them can develop into a star, we can broaden our search. But until then we really need a legit low post option that we run plays and isos for. Maybe Patterson is that player, maybe Jones, maybe Moti - if not, I am sure PFs will be our main target.
Parsons will likely be better than Iggy moving forward. Parsons is still improving; Iggy is a finished product and will begin declining over the next couple of years.
Ehh...let's not go crazy here. Yes. Yes. Yes, and this may hurt a player like Iggy the most. He came into the league with a terrible jump shot, practiced at it, and now it's just a little worse than average. Unfortunately for him, wing players with longevity in the league often have a much better than average jump shot, high post skills, or other attributes that are not tied to their athleticism. Iggy has none of these. It may get ugly for him once he hits the wrong side of 30.
The people who want to use up our remaining max capspace to throw at an FA in the summer... have you guys considered the following? If Parsons, Lin, Asik continue to improve, then more than like one or two or all three of them will expect bigger contracts. And if the Rocket's don't have the cap room then other teams might be willing to swoop in and pay more. I could easily see Asik getting 12 per at the end of his current and possibly more if he's gotten a lot stronger offensively. On the other hand, Morey could trade one or more for solid picks or other moves. But to keep this core here beyond their current contracts, you probably don't have as much money as you'd like to think to spend on a FA. Unless my math is poor and I'm missing something?
Harden-Iguodala-Parsons would be a very interesting lineup, very hard to play against. I like it, but I'm not sure where it fits in the big plan. Step 2 would be... hoping to trade the other assets for a star PF? Waiting till 2015 and making a run at Love?
You're missing a lot but it's cool. If they have the player's Bird rights (they do for Lin, for Parsons, and maybe for Asik is well, I'd have to check on his contract status), then the Rockets absolutely CAN exceed the salary cap to resign all of them for big money. This is an important exception that was put in the last few collective bargaining agreements because what would happen was that a small market team would draft a promising player, invest all their time and resources developing that player themselves, use up their cap space surrounding that player with free agency talent, and then when their contract was up, they were powerless to match the big $$ offers of other teams and retain their own free agents. So their own talent would get poached or else couldn't be resigned at a fair market price for their services. So the important thing to know here is that there are huge exceptions to the salary cap rules for younger guys like that. If Les Alexander wants to open up the coffers and exceed the salary cap to keep them all--and in the scenario you proposed, those players have all developed into great ones so why not--then Alexander could definitely do that. There is nothing stopping him or the Rockets from doing that.
First of all, Iggy is not an elite talent. He is a very solid player but that's it. He's not gonna make us a contender. On the other hand, Parsons is way cheaper and much younger than Iggy. Some may argue that Iggy is a better player than Parsons but Morey has consistently said we need another another top15/20 players to play alongside w/ Harden and Iggy is clearly not what we need. We've had enough solid players and it is stupid to waste that cap room on a 2nd tier player. All we need to do now is to be patient and retain our flexibility. Save that max cap room and wait for the next available star.
Parsons does almost as much as Iggy for 1/10 of the price. He's almost 30 and still can't shoot efficiently. We need a Post player not a wing player.
I'm not trying to have Iggy replace Parsons. But to have two of them. And there's plenty of minutes to go around, as Iggy and Parsons both can play SG. Plus against smaller lineups, Parsons can play some PF in certain matchups. So both players can get 30+mpg no problem.
I guess the most pertinent question is what the bidding would be like for Iggy when his contract is up. Does he take a pay cut? Is he a max player at age 30? The Nuggets seem to like him, but they "seemed to like" guys like Raymond Felton, Kenyon Martin, and Al Harrington too, and look how that turned out. So hard to try to predict the future when it comes to this particular player.
This doesn't make sense to me. Iggy is going to cost us 10+M and hurt our flexibility. While we already had 2 quality wing players in Harden and Parsons, why are we paying that sum of money on someone who's not going to make us a contender?
Iggy would fix the backcourt defense which is a problem. He's like an much much improved version of Lin + David Wesley all rolled into one. The Nuggets won't give him up cheaply. Harden and Parsons should be untouchable in this kind of deal. So it leaves the Rockets with nothing to offer.