Just to clarify, Cook wasn't a bad contract. We did not take on any meaningful additional salary in the Lowry/Alston trade. All players involved in the trade are expiring this year and the effect on our luxury tax was negligible. Lowry and Cook combined = 5.5 million this year Alston = 5.25 million this year To this day, Morey has taken on less than 5 million in additional salary to bring in talent (Lowry, Scola trades). Jackie Butler made 2.5M, Reed made 2M, Cook added a few hundred thousand. That's a far cry from what we're being asked to take on in potential Tmac trades.
lol @ you calling cook's contract an albatross and making it sound like it is somehow comparable to sammy's train wreck of a contract. how in the world would we be able to jettison sammy's contract elsewhere if the rockets (one of the richer teams) don't even want to touch it? plus there is that horrible trade kicker which screws everything. the trade kicker is almost equal to cook's contract. then we likely go over the lux tax if we take on sammy and try to re-sign landry and/or scola. it's like you don't understand how bad sammy's contract really is. i didn't completely get it until i read a few of bima's posts and it really makes you understand how toxic and flat out expensive it is to acquire iggy and other young philly talent. it's going to cost the rockets around 20 million (sammy+trade kicker+lux tax) to get iggy. that is a lot of freaking money for a backup center who is a r****d on offense. sure he can block some shots and rebound, but he won't be playing more than 10-15 mpg for us. finally, iggy's contract is not reasonable. he is overpaid and it is long. however, you can deal with that since he is very productive on both ends of the court, he is coming into his prime, and he has been an ironman. further, i don't feel like adding iggy and yao makes the rockets on par with the lakers and celtics. iggy would have to take his game to the next level (which could happen) for us to be on their level imo and he has not shown he can do that yet.
Did anyone ever think we could get all star players for mcg alone? I thought the plan since november has always been to get a young potential all star/budding allstar and a cancer contract. It isn't rational to expect anything else. Except in some cases where the all star has the poison contract himself. (re: butler to an extent)
What makes Tracy's 23 mil contract valuable to financially struggling teams is that they trade one of their bad contracts and pair it with talent for one that will expire after this year. I don't think that there is a team out there that would want Tracy's contract without wanting to get rid of a bad contract. It's true that Morey has never taken a bad contract like Dalembert's in the past, but in the past he never had trade an expiring contract the size of Mcgrady's. Les has said that he wanted to take advantage of teams that are struggling financially to get talent. And the only way to get a talented long term player would be to take a bad contract. I also don't think Dalembert's contract is that bad. He's a 7ft center that can help us now when one of our weakest positions right now is center and thats way more value than Cook or Butler. Plus he has good trade value, teams like Portland and Sacramento could really use him. Not to mention he expires in only 2011.
I want to know and i want u to think long and hard even if those aren't two of your best qualities :grin:. Can morey pull the big deal? You know as well as i do there is a big difference between the smaller money,smaller players deals hes shown to be good at, but can he make the big one? The one that requires alot of contracts, the one that might seem dead, and the one that suddenly becomes a reality? The iggy deal is going to take some brass balls. For all the flack CD took over the years, he could make that deal. The mcgrady deal was a huge deal as was moving up to get francis and the 3 picks to get griffin. Its one thing being ichiro and its another being bonds. I guess we will see and hopefully its a good deal for all parties involved. Getting iggy will take some serious ,serious number crunching. Getting butler and others not so much.
it remains to be seen. i believe that morey can take it to the next level (r.c. buford level) without crippling the rockets cap situation. i don't know how you feel lee, but i don't think iggy is enough to make the rox champions. he is a very big piece, but if you look at a team like boston they have top notch defenders and efficient offensive players at almost every position. i still think we will need more than iggy. hopefully, morey can figure it out and get the right deal(s) done. i think it is going to take a boston-style set of acquisitions to do it. we need another superstar and i think iggy is a very nice player, but not a superstar.
Great post. But i dont understand what we would be saving for if we get AI. He is the answer to all our needs. Say if we save all this money for summer of 2010, what if we end up with nothing? I wouldnt mind taking on a bad contract like Dalembert for an extra year as long as we have Iggy. I think we would still be able to resign Scola and Lowry if we made the Iggy + Dalembert trade but not the Elton Brand one. But im not even sure what Scola or Lowry is worth on the market. I see Lowry as replaceable with Will Conroy but im not so sure of Scola...Maybe next year Carl will start and Anderson back up Carl? Who knows...but whatever happens i know the future is bright for us rocket fans.
most of us just said that there was no one that was worth getting, we don't want a heavy longterm contract, we don't want to get rid of any of our guys for mediocre talent, most of the deals still don't promise us the best end of the deal, who were they considering for the iggy trade?
I wonder if Scola and Ginobili are kicking back right now discussing for what team they will play together next year.
its not so much that the team is saving to spend more in free agency, it's that they want to just save money in general business-wise, make more profit or simply not end up over the cap where they have to pay a gazillion taxes. Sometimes we forget there's a business side to it and Les has to look out for his investment, which we like to call a basketball team :grin:
Some of my friends are Spurs fans...they are thinking Ginobili's best days are behind him. I would miss Scola if he left but as long as we have Carl...im fine with that! :grin:
True...I wonder how much profit Les actually makes each season on this team? Im sure a butt load because of Yao.
I don't doubt his ability to pull off the big deals considering how easily he got Artest and he's a step below Iggy on this imaginary trade difficulty scale. The core issue here is: money and cap flexibility. Bima raises extremely valid points regarding how certain trades could essentially lead to us losing Scola, Lowry or whoever. These are all undoubtedly huge variables throughout all this. So while I, like the rest of you, hope for a huge deal to go down, I will fully understand if nothing happens and we simply let him expire (as Morey has threatened). That said, you have to trust him to do what's best and simply not go for the most flashy deal available.
Ron had baggage and it was known he was on his way out because of the kings' youth movement. They were basically pushing him out, not the case with Iggy. He also got lucky in a way because Greene was having such a great summer league and it raised his value.
They were looking to move him but he was still a big named player that we got for peanuts. The obvious line of thinking at the time was that we were one guy away and he made it happen. That's the point. As for Iggy, Philly knows he can't carry that team. He makes too much money to be just part of the machine and not the engine. Yeah, he's young and he has value but Philly is approaching the point where they have to seriously question moving him given how they're a couple years away from being a serious threat to do anything. Iggy makes too much money to stick around for their continued rebuilding.
I'm not saying this as a known fact, but i think its easier to build a title team like the old pistons than it is like the lakers or cleveland. I think landing iggy, extending brooks and landry and have chase getting better sets the rockets in a position to where there wont be any huge salary players, but with iggy,brooks,and landry added with Yao, they have a couple of guys that can get better, but has shown they can be factors in the crunch time and make shots. Iggy has done it, brooks in the playoffs and through this season has, landry is mr 4th qt, and ariza made huge baskets in the title run last yr. Basically what you would have is 5 guys that can score anywhere from 15-20 pts. The transition games gets better, the perimeter defense also gets better. So now when teams front yao to take him out, other guys are comfortable in attacking and playing without yao. After that, u fill the bench up with young vet depth. I was discussin this with bima in the other thread and i think taking dalambert is worth losing scola and lowry in the offseason and replacing them with guys like conroy,amir johnson,josh powell to name a few. Iggy's salary vs his production, durability, and age are on par actually. Butler and martin are the better scorer's and butler is actually a good defender also, but iggy has the overral package. Dalambert is grossly overpaid, but its only for a year and thats why it would probably cost lowry and scola. What dalembert does do is give adelman good combinations. I actually think Dalambert as a anchor in the backup role would allow anderson to play the 4 more effectively. So when yao and landry comes out, u sub in sam,anderson,and anderson. That would allow anderson to be a scorer and dalembert the rim defender. Dalembert actually has a ok face up 12ft er. Also with dalambert, when they play a team like the lakers, their will be chnaces to play them together to match the gasol/bynum frontcourt. Like i mentioned earlier, scola is deserving of at least mle-6.5m and lowry is probably a 3-4m guy. The problem is landry is younger and making huge strides and probably worth 8m and brooks is the starter and the better player and is worth about 7. I cant see why the rockets would pay scola 6m and risk losing landry the following offseason. Also with iggy, the rockets get another expiring to go along with battier. This summer if this deal is made might explore trading shane and his 7m for a 2nd rd pick or a team with cap room similar to the camby trade. That would also drop the payroll and allow some flexibility. Of course, we're guessing,hoping or hating the prospects of adding salary and player because theyre playing well. I'm sure and it has been reported alot that morey overvalues his players similar to rod thorn, but thats his deal. I guess we will see or maybe its just alot of talk.
If Iggy is traded he is being pushed out, no longer the flavor of the month. What team didn't view the Rox as much, much stronger with RA than before? What team would not view the Rox as much, much stronger with AIjr than before? But, the point is that Iggy is discussable and so many others, too, after these days of floating rumors and writers' takes. It spells: Good News. That's all; and that is good!
The prevailing belief is teams WANT to dump salary, and Rockets WILL take on extra salary. That sounds as though both sides are more than willing to work with each other. I think its at a lesser level than that. We want the Rockets to do that and they're in a decent position to do it. We want the other teams to be in dump mode. But we just want to see a splashy move is why, cuz in the end its not our money. Rockets arent in 2000s New York Knicks position, they still got to operate within a framework. It'll still be an interesting February. Financially struggling teams, and other teams lying to their fanbase that they're in the 2010 free agent sweeptakes looking for an excuse to cut costs, that could very well come into play at the trade deadline.
