[ClutchFans] Houston Rockets Salary Cap Update: The Impact of Harden's Deal

I could care less about all this money that you guys are talking about. To me the most important thing is about how well Chandler Parsons and James Harden interact on the court. They have some great chemistry which will help us in the future. Do you guys think they hang out outside of the court? Like go to clubs or go to dinner together. I feel like that explains why the team is so great right now. Playoff run am I right?

 

We wouldn't have James Harden if the Rockets didn't have money to get him.
So the money is pretty important.

Cash Money Millionaires

 

Great read Bima! And I thought I was cap savvy when I could make the contracts match without trade finder on 2K.

 

Thanks for the update! I hope we do not throw the whole amount on just one player. Even with the addition of a Josh Smith, Kevin Love or what have you, we will not be top 3 in the West. We need to sign a big man or trade for one in the range of 10-12 million salary per year, trade away Patterson and get a good 6th man (SG / SF) for 5 million a year, so letting go of Delfino.

 

Thankyou, I thought maybe I missed the post Harden update.

Bima, in your opinion did Morey make a mistake using the amnesty on Scola . If his salary was on the books during Harden talks, would the deal still have worked capwise?

I'm curious to know if Morey pulled the trigger too early. In hindsight, if the cap situation still worked in his favour, it seems he could have waited the year.

 

I disagree. You take arguably the best pf in the league all day. I think Love would be the perfect compliment to Asik and Harden. Love seems to be a natural leader on the court. This is what the current squad lacks. To top it off, he's only 24.

 

Excellent stuff as always, Bima!

 

The Harden trade has absolutely nothing to do with our salary situation. In that trade, we actually gave away more salary. OKC had to add a bunch of salary fillers to make the money work on their end.

The only thing that mattered by amnestying Scola and all that other salary dumping in the offseason were Asik and Lin. Lin's salary and Dragic's basically offset. But Asik was signed only because we had the extra room, finalized by the Scola amnesty.

So technically, we could've kept our entire core of Dragic, Lee, Scola, etc. intact, at the cost of Asik and Lin.

 

Thanks for updating us Bima! Always appreciate your analysis.

 

The only value I see in keeping Delfino is you could trade him to another team and because we are below the cap we could take back basically a max player from them. That team would then cut him and drop a huge amount of salary very quick and easy. He is a get out of salary hell quick card for another team.

Keeping him is certainly not helping the team much, I think Cook can provide what Delfino provides or a very close approximation of it.

 

Delfino is a good shooter with little hesitation. Other teams know if they cover him, they will get some bad shots out of him. He will knock down uncontested threes if not covered tightly. The Rockets know that the spacing for other players is worth the few bad shots he takes. It would be nice to have a guy that could hit uncontested threes like Delfino, but know when to make the pass to the next guy.

If the Rockets find a team willing to trade a great player and Delfino's salary is needed for matching purposes, I'm fine letting him go.

 

I'm not complaining about the teams direction, but you could say Morey fired too early. If the Lowry and Dalembert deals are made. Technically the pieces are still there to field a Harden trade and ultimatley a Dragic, Harden, Parsons, Scola and Camby starting lineup.

The future wouldn't be as flexible cap wise, but your adding Harden to a .500 team with 6 or so prospects for future improvement.

I'm just rambling now.

 

Agree with the analysis in regards to Scola. I have no issues with using the Amnesty on him. He isn't anything more than a decent role player that is aging. His salary was outrageous.

 

I disagree. I think the Rockets simply preferred their whole load of 2nd round picks rather than Scola. After all, a lot of fans here wanted us to trade Scola for "something." By amnestying him rather than sacrificing all those S&T options, it was basically a trade.

The only reason to keep Scola in the first place would be having a contending team with him. Which meant keeping everyone else. The fact that we drafted Patterson, Morris, and DMo pretty much pointed to his departure.

 

Perhaps, I have no idea how likely Morey felt a Harden trade was early in the offseason. The fact that the Rockets had pieces in place to move up in the draft suggest they assumed the Harden trade was not likely. Yes, if the Harden deal happened before the draft, it's very possible our offseason would be vastly different. But in the end, no one we lost killed our future. If Morey has showed anything, it's his ability to find average role players at any given moment. If the Rockets need to restock, Morey will pull the trigger.

 

One more question that is only vaguely related to this topic: what is the situation with our draft picks.

I know we owe our first round pick next year if we make the playoffs - I think to the Hawks. Do we owe any other picks or do we have the rights to any other teams first rounder?

And if I'm correct you can't trade first rounders two years in a row - since we don't know when we have to give up our first rounder, we basically can't trade another one, until after we know, when we have to give up the pick to the Hawks, right?

So basically, in the near future we don't have a first rounder we can trade, right?

 

That's an interesting way of looking at it. Never thought of it that way.

 

2013 F/A's

Bima - what's your thought on the 2013 FA's? Looking at the list, other than Chris Paul and DH, I don't see much I'd be excited about. Neither of those guys seem like realistic possibilities. Who might you guess our target(s) is/are?