McGrady is almost untradable! Not even worth more than 7.5 mins on a lowly Rocket's team, expiring contract is not worth much in this economy!
I agree, I only want the trade to be made if it can help the team as whole. Any thoughts on who we could possibly pursue?
New Orleans needs to release CP3 from hell: This Trade is Successful! Trade to:Houston Rockets/New Orleans Hornets Chris Paul $13,520,500 30.0 PG1 0 3 Years P. Stojakovic $13,392,000 12.5 SF5 0 2 Years James Posey $6,031,800 10.9 SF5 0 3 Years Acquiring 3 Players T. McGrady $22,843,124 16.4 SG2 0 1 Year Aaron Brooks $1,118,520 12.9 PG1 0 2 Years S. Battier $6,939,200 10.7 SG2 0 2 Years New Orleans starting lineup: Brooks Tmac Battier West Okafor Rockets starting lineup: CP3 Ariza Budinger Scola Hayes (Yao) Would you do it if you were the Rockets or New Orleans? (hahaha)
Boy you sure know how to lie to make yourself look good. One minute u want him gone he is hurting the team n now your talking about you only trade him if the deal makes sense. What ever happened to we need him out
Can you explain why the economy devalues expiring contracts? Seems like the exact opposite should be true. Take a team like NO. They have several long term/high dollar deals on the books, they are way over the luxury tax and they have a very small revenue steam and an owner without deep pockets. Why would a team lik NO not be willing to give up assets if it mean it could relieve them of tens of millions of dollars of long term debt? What am I missing? Bill Simmon's recently outlined just such a deal. Forget if you believe NO would trade Paul or not. Explain to me how the financial end of the deal is incorrect? The economy makes teams MORE willing to take an expiring deal just to get out of debt. 2009-10 payroll: $73.1 million (OVER TAX) Projected 2010-11 payroll: $71.8 million (OVER TAX) Sorry, Hornets fans, but trading Chris Paul may be the team's only way out of financial problems. • VP's Take: Let's go Hubiespeak for this one. You have Chris Paul, one of the 10 best players in the league. (The other nine: LeBron, Kobe, Dirk, Melo, Nash, Howard, Wade, Brandon Roy and LeBron again. He counts twice.) You owe Peja Stojakovic, Mo Peterson and Darius Songaila $51.8 million combined through 2011; you also owe James Posey $21.5 million through 2012. Throwing in the luxury tax (you're over this season and next season), you're losing eight figures per year to keep Chris Paul on a team that can't win the title, anyway … and you can't do anything to help his supporting cast for at least a year. What if someone made you a "Godfather" offer for Paul and absorbed your bad contracts? What then? Fake Trade 8A: Houston trades Aaron Brooks (expires in 2011) with T-Mac, Scola and Brian Cook (all expire in 2010) for Chris Paul and the Peja-Songaila-Posey cap-killing trio. Considering Houston's deep pockets, it would have to do it -- how else could the Rockets acquire a top-10 player? And New Orleans would fall under the tax (saving them about $16-17 million this year, plus another $25-30 million next year) and replace a decent chunk of Paul's production with a Brooks/Darren Collison combo. http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/091223&sportCat=nba
Sorry, I don't have much to do at work today, so this is a little long winded and probably full of cr*p: Is sign and trade the answer? I don't think so, for the reasons that follow: 1. AFAIK you carry his cap hold on your cap until you execute the S & T. McGrady's cap hold is 23 million * 150%, which is about 34.5 million. So if you don't renounce, you remain well over the cap and all you can do is MLE and LLE signings (I don't remember if we used the LLE last year). And if you do renounce, you have no advantage in doing an S & T over every other team in the league, so it would never happen. 2. Assumig that you would live with the huge cap hold and being over the cap in the FA market, why would anyone bother with an S & T for McGrady? The only way it makes sense is if the acquiring team wants to acquire your Bird rights so they can bring him in without going over the cap or if you hold Bird rights and can therefore enter into a contract at a higher dollar value than other teams (Ha! As Captain Obvious might say, Mac is no longer a max money guy). Given that McGrady is probably even not worth MLE money at this point in his career, why would offering to S & T him earn you anything worthwhile back. So how about just renouncing to free up money under the cap? If you renounce, you get about $0.50 on the dollar in terms of available salaries for players. At first blush, this makes sense as it also has the effect of getting you well under the LT and creating room for salary growth in our existing young talent pool over the next couple of years. However, in Les Alexander you have an owner who is willing to dance with the LT to generate competitive advantage. Why would Morey waste potential "over the cap" carrying capacity as a savvy GM? I think the answer is that he doesn't - he acquires every bit of talent he can every year without creating conditions further down the line that significantly impact your flexibility. How do you trade a guy with a huge salary, degraded ability, uncertain health and a bad attitude who is a big game liability to boot without taking back someone else's garbage? Seriously, why would anyone want Tracey? There is a lot of buzz in the media that the expiring is not worth as much as it might have been in other years given poor economic performance and reduced spending across the league, which is probably true. So you would only want him to clear out cap space, but how much is that worth really? I'm guessing that you don't get a lot of value dangled, and that because of the size of Tracey's number you are likely either taking a bad contract back in addition to whatever that value is. So what does Morey do? The answer to me is that Morey bundles undervalued players in addition to McGrady to keep from taking back crap and shoots for a big player. As an aside, we all have a pretty high opinion of Morey right now, for what I think are two reasons. 1. Morey has taken calculated risks that are low cost / high potential return - e.g. buying second round picks to select Budinger and Taylor, signing second round picks to contracts with guaranteed money and low cost team options. Thus, in addition to the basketball benefits having these people around, you create assets, e.g. players who have costs that are lower than their perceived value. 2. Morey has had the vision to see a downsizing of the league and has brought in players who, despite size disadvantages, are positioned to flourish in a changing environment. What we don't see so much is that Morey is a pretty ruthless negotiator when it comes to paying his own guys. The best example so far was Morey letting Landry test the free agent market and hold off until then to match. A less compelling one was his lowball offer to Artest. So I think that there are a large number of players that are likely throw ins depending of Morey's assessment of there performance v. value - 1. Scola - expiring deal worth 3.28m @ 29 years old. I think Scola is an MLE player on the current market, which put him at 5-6 million. Given that cost level, you have Landry at 3m next year. Is Scola worth the extra scratch next year? 2. Battier - 7.3m next year. Ariza is a failed experiment as a feature scorer. Again, is Battier worth it if you can upgrade significantly at the 2/3 and think Ariza can assume a role at core of the defense and as a spot up shooter? There is a second group of players where Morey has created or acquired extraordinary value on a cost v. performance basis: CBud, Aaron, Landry, Lowry. Of these, Landry is the best - dollar for dollar the best player in the league, hands down. Basket for basket the most efficient player in the league. Minute for minute the best 4 quarter player in the league. And he plays for little better than LLE money next season. I thought you were going to tell us what Morey will do? Yeah, OK, I got lost for a second. Here it goes - 1. Morey trades Mac + Scola, Ariza, or Battier for a largish expiring deal and 2 players who present similar value at with either different skill sets (balanced scorer) or positions of need (center, off guard). 2. Morey pairs Mac with one or more of his high value / low cost assets and adds a max level guy - Chris Paul (BYC status at 6m will make this really hard), Chris Bosh, etc. Regardless, I think we are going to lose a key piece of the current team to maximize what remains of the McGrady asset and make the club better. I have a hard time with losing anyone on the current squad save Ariza and Cook, so this will be pretty bittersweet.
