[BimaThug] how the rockets can avoid the tax while signing buyout guys

You guys are idiots. Ever team and owner are in the league to MAKE money. The Rockets are not worried about the luxury tax, its the repeater tax that is punitive. Savings this year delays that til 2023.

 

This is ridiculous, Morey should've just traded Nene

 

Tilman is ok with paying luxury tax. It's the repeater tax that he and all the other owners desperately want to avoid. Every year after this year Harden, Paul, and Clint earn more and more each year. It was going to be harder and harder to get under the luxury tax after this season. Getting below the luxury tax this season allows the Rockets to go over the luxury tax while avoiding the repeater tax in future years. Tilman and Morey decided this was the best year to get below the luxury tax and gives them freedom to spend in future years.

When Harden and Paul were signed to those max contracts things like this were bound to happen. Remember when the super friends played for Miami? Every year the Heat would have to scrape together a bunch of minimum contract players to fill out the roster. And that was with the super friends taking less than max contracts.

This is the problem with having multiple star players on max contracts. I don't expect owners to lose money in order to win championships. The repeater tax will cause owners to lose money in a hurry.

 

Where is this wiggle room? He wrote:

"Following these steps, the #Rockets⁠ should stay just below the luxury tax threshold even if Capela hits his likely (WCF & 30%+ DREB%) incentives. (If Capela also hits over 65% on his FTs, however, it blows all this up.)"

Clint is at 63% right now on free throws. Supposing he plays 20 more games with the same rate of free throw attempts, we need him to shoot less than 70% for him not to hit that 65% target.

 

And that's fine if that's the long-term plan. I still don't like not going all in this season since CP3 ain't getting any younger and Harden will be 30 next year. But if Tilman is fully committed to spending real money on the team over the remainder of Paul's contract, ok. Until that happens though, I'll remain cynical that we have a cheap owner from the Donald Sterling mold(budgetwise, not racially) whose sole concern is making a profit every year.

 

• Morey better not flirt with the WCF Incentive of $1m. That's too much bad mojo.
• In other words, he better treat that money as already spent.

Also, if we start to artificial keep Capela's minutes down (his incentives require 2,000 minutes -- 564 more), to avoid all bonuses, well, that really hurts us from a free agency reputation standpoint, and is just mean to Capela.

 

.....

 

This team needs more than one player added in order to sustain a major injury and just to have enough talent to reasonably expect to win a series against the Warriors with some luck. It's a simple model, look at the teams with the top 5 records in the league. They can sit their James Harden for rest. Kawhi Leonard takes games off regularly. Boston. Now the Sixers. Denver has been dealing with serious injuries all season.

We're not a Danuel House away. We are not an attractive enough situation to have buyout candidates wait around for what suits us. You just have to define penny pinching. We can sit here all day and rationalize what's going on, but no one does this mid season. If another team were "carefully managing" their finances mid season, we would say they're throwing in the towel.

 

But, but, but didn’t Tilman say he’s willing to do whatever is necessary to win a championship.....or did I just hallucinate that?

 

Not just mean to Capela. It's devastating to this organization's reputation. Who the hell would ever sign here? You could be sent to the G-League in a contract dispute(House), dumped in order to save money(Knight, Chriss, Ennis), or benched in order to be denied a bonus(Capela).

 

The real kicker is that 1.5m means much more to Capela than that 1 million break CP0 could have given the team.

 

I'm sure limiting his minutes and having Clint regress to Steven Adams mode to allow Harden to hit some Russell Westbrook triple doubles might help us to it.

Chris Paul's minutes have been limited so far and he isn't playing on back to backs. We could essentially use the same method with Clint. Especially now that Kenneth Faried has filled in admirably in his place.

 

That's just one of the ways.

• If he gets cut during the regular season, his contract becomes fully guaranteed
• If he plays 2 playoff games, his contract becomes fully guaranteed
• And then he also has an August? (maybe Sept) waive date, after which it's fully guaranteed

 

You really think Clint's gonna be ok with being benched in order to save the team money and deny him his bonuses?

 

Tilman Fertitta is why 70% top marginal rate is popular.

 

Let's not feel sorry for Clark and House. They are UFA and have no right to assume their gonna get guaranteed contracts. That would be stupid even for Morey to do.