[CBS Sports] Howard no lock for Lakers; interested in Rockets

AND. PLEASE. QUIT. QUOTING. THE. DOLT. I. HAVE. HIM. ON. IGNORE. FOR. A. REASON.

 

Thanks for that post.

The author is a little biased for Thomas Robinson, saying he'd rather trade T-Jones, D-Mo and Royce White for future draft picks.

I don't know if trading Royce White is possible. That kinda wrecks his plans.

He also said we would be 700k short if we trade T-Rob. Well, one solution to that is to use the stretch provision on Royce White's contract, that would net us just over a $1m in cap room thus allowing us to offer Dwight the full max.

My question is what teams would we trade T-Rob to for a future (1st round?) draft pick. I'm thinking Charlotte and Cleveland could both use a top 5 draft pick PF. What team do you guys think would take T-Rob for a future draft pick?

 

I'm thinking we can get a top 10 pick in this draft if we trade 2 of TRob/DMo/TJones plus our 2014 pick. If we can do that and get Cody Zeller, I'd be all for it.

The other thing I'm wondering about is Chris Finch and his desire to go to Philly and Hinkie's desire to hire him. Everything has been on the down low since that rumor started. I'm wondering if perhaps Finch's contract requires permission and release from the Rockets to interview and hire him and I'm wondering if Morey can use that as an inducement to get Philly to trade us their lottery pick. Basically, Their lottery pick to us for the ability to sign Finch as their coach and possibly take our 14 pick.

Since unsigned draft picks have no salary trade value, Philly could draft who we want at 11 and just keep him unsigned until we complete our other transactions for Dwight or whoever. Then they trade him (Zeller) to us for our 14 pick and we sign him.

 

Wasn't French still the official language in England in the 1500s?

 

Wow! That's an absolutely fantastic idea. I'm all for that. You really worked out how to maximize the slightest leverage we have.

One thing though, I believe 1st round draft picks have a cap hold of around 1.5m. It's 2nd round draft picks that don't count until they are signed. I'm not at my computer at the moment so I can't check.

Anyways, T-Rob + D-Mo + R.White = 3.5 + 1.4 + 1.7 = 6.6m extra cap - the cap holds. Should be enough to offer Dwight the super max.

 

SI and cap question

In SI's Truth and Rumors this morning it said Rockets would have to trade Asik or Lin to make room for Howard. I don't think that is really the case. Did Bima break this down for us in another thread?

 

I believe all we need to do is get rid of Delfino and possibly trade Thomas Robinson for a pick like Miami did to Beasley. I imagine it would have to be a 2nd round pick due to cap holds, but I'm no Bima.

 

I'd settle for regular english.

You have to write for your audience if you expect to be understood, and the amount of folks who speak the kind of slang he was using is far lower than folks who expect to read standard english on a english language board.

 

I thought it was something like that as well and we could use Asik and other assets to trade for a Josh Smith or some other non-max all star type.

 

Yeah, depending on what level the cap is set, we are about 3.5m to 4.0m short of offering Dwight the full max (after waiving all non-guaranteed contracts except Parsons, Beverley and G.Smith).

You can look at that as T-Rob for a future draft pick.

Or 2x other young PFs.

A Lin or an Asik at 8.4m would put us well over but I think we want to hang on to those two.

 

It's annoying that everyone in the media seems to want us to trade 8m+ in salary when we only need about 3.5-4M as said above. The media can speculate all they want, but I think we all know that Morey already has his game plan all laid out and will begin executing it once everything is in place.

 

I think maybe the media is assuming that we wouldn't want to keep Asik in a scenario where we bring on Dwight. I actually agree with that since they would both clog up the lane and you wouldn't want an $8M back up.

The difference is that I don't think we would trade Asik to get Howard as this would be a desperation move and we wouldn't get much in return. If we were to get Howard and then trade Asik later in the summer or early in the season, we would maximize our incoming talent.

 

Agree. No need to trade Asik to get Dwight, that'd just giving him away. We can free up the 3.5m in the other ways I've outlined above. I think we'll play the Twin Towers at least until deadline to see if it can work.

Alternatively, Asik will be used as a trade piece in addition to another player to get the third star...

Ex.
Asik + Lin = Chris Paul, KLove
Asik + PF = Josh Smith, LMA
Asik = Milsap

 

I don't think this team is solid enough to pay/play Asik and Howard at the C position. And putting either at PF isn't gonna work. Teams will be lining up to trade for Asik so we should be looking for PF, SG, wing defenders, and draft picks.

 

I really like Asik and don't want to see him go.

I want to at least try and give this line-up a shot...

Lin
Harden
Parsons
Howard
Asik

 

Hasn't anybody heard that podcast on espn explaining this where they say they can keep all the starters ill post the link to it again but hope it don't disappear

http://espn.go.com/nba/team/_/name/hou/houston-rockets

 

To me, the worse case is we trade T-Rob for a protected 2014 1st and trade White + cash + future 2nd round pick(s) for a heavily protected 2nd round pick. That clears the space we need to sign Dwight. Then you still have TJones, DMo, Lin, Beverley, Asik and 2 1st round picks in 2014 to go after a 3rd star.

 

Well, I would look at it a couple different ways than that.

And a lot of the detail is going to be based on what the cap does. If the cap moves up to $60 million it's gonna be pretty easy to give Dwight a max deal. If the cap moves down to $58.5 million, it's still possible but it'll cost us a little bit more.

First of all, if the cap goes to $60 million, Harden's salary will rise to approximately $14,129,367.38. So you'd have right at $43,503,775 wrapped up in 12 players (Harden, Asik, Lin, TRob, White, Jones, DMO, Parsons, Smith, Anderson, Beverley, Ohlbrecht). So, you'd have to shave a little over $4 million off the cap to add Dwight. That means trading away that much salary or a combination of trading a player plus dropping some of the non-guaranteed salaries (Anderson, Smith, Ohlbrecht) However, Anderson and Ohlbrecht are on league minimum deals and have trade value. So you wouldn't have to drop them. And although Smith isn't on a league minimum deal, he still has enough trade value that you wouldn't have to drop him for nothing.

Anyways, so theoretically Morey could trade away TRob/Smith/Ohlbrecht for future considerations in the $60 million salary cap scenario and create enough spaced to sign Dwight outright. (Most likely the Lakers would agree to S&T Dwight under this scenario for nothing but a huge TPE which would mean only 1 of Smith/Ohlbrecht would need to be sent out to get a S&T done since you can be up to $100,000 over the cap after the trade.)

So that would leave TJones/DMo/Anderson/White to combine salaries with. That would come out to $5,610,139 that could be used in a sign and trade transaction for a guy like Paul Millsap. Using the 150% rule we could offer him a little north of $35 million over 4 years in a sign and trade. So you could possibly turn all these guys into Millsap and Cody Zeller playing along with Dwight and Asik, plus whatever future picks we acquired from moving out all these rookie contracts.

You would wind up with a roster looking something like this:

Lin/Beverley/(Goudelock or DJ Kennedy)
Harden/???(free agent or possibly our 2nd rounder, somebody like Ricky Ledo or Bullock would be dreamy)
Parsons/??? (possibly Delfino re-signed with the Room MLE or possibly Garcia re-signed to Room MLE or another vet minimum salary like Tyler Honeycutt)
Dwight/Asik/(perhaps Whiteside added on a minimum salary non-guaranteed deal)
Millsap/Zeller
fill out rest of roster with veteran minimum salary guys.

I know not many people probably followed this all the way through but you get the gist of the possibilities here. I'll admit I am very biased towards Cody Zeller in this draft and I'm very partial towards Paul Millsap in free agency. I want to get kid Zeller and Millsap to play 4 for us. I think the big rotation I set up in this hypothetical would be the best in the NBA and along with our great perimeter guys we already have that is a team that would win the West and very possibly run down Miami or whoever comes out of the East next season.

 

I agree.