Morey given permission to spend into the luxury tax!

I don't want to be a Debbie Downer here, but...

I'll bet against them going wild into the luxury tax. They'll go a little bit by spending the MLE probably and I think they'll explore a trade of someone like Capela or Gordon for a better player, but by dumping Knight they got themselves out of a situation where they'd be tempted to go crazy.

As I expected, Shumpert didn't play very well here and they now have reason to not want to keep him. Once he's gone, his salary slot is gone. Unless we get super lucky and Butler demands a trade here or someone loves Capela, we aren't likely to make a serious upgrade. We'll dip into the luxury tax on MLE money and maybe an extension for Gordon, but we aren't going out and signing top free agents or trading for mid level players to upgrade. We CAN'T do that.

The chalk pick for the offseason would be spending the MLE and adding players via the minimum.

 

I agree that they need a front court player but idk if trading CC for one is the answer. I think it’s going to be another season where they have to look for an impact front court player on the buyout market.

 

Yup

Knight trade was only ever good if shumpert played great this year . As it stands we don't have a big expiring contract to use in trades .

Getting under LT this season might have been a fatal mistake .

 

Someone start an "Official Appreciation thread for Lux Tax Savings."

Bye bye, LTS. We'll miss you. You are a consummate professional. I was hoping that you would retire a Rocket.

 

I believe Tilman will go into the LT now that the *repeater LT* cycle isn't looming.

HOWEVER, I don't blame a single person on this forum for not believing Tilman.

The proof will be in the pudding.

 

How many G-League is he going to get in with that?

 

i guess this sucks then lol...who could we possibly get on the buyout market who could fill this role. Not having capela makes us worse against a lot of other teams. But he doesn't help us versus the warriors. its a big problem. an impact big on the buyout would be a miracle. someone who can post up or pick and pop, and play great defense? those are almost all-stars.

 

yikes

How many seasons are we gonna be hoping for saviors on the buyout market? If Morey doesn’t bring in some high end talent this summer then Harden’s agent really needs to start that dialogue about a possible trade.

 

I would like to get rid of Capela, somehow get DeAndre Jordan (maybe on a hometown deal) and somehow get Tobias Harris. I would like EG coming off the bench again. Im too mentally exhausted from our loss to figure out how feasible this is....but its 100% more realistic than people asking for Kawai, Embid, AD and any other superstar.

 

Water is wet.... they better spend...no other option.

 

This is a bad time to go over the standard cap. It's not like when Parsons was about to get a big boy contract and we had a chance at Bosh and could have legitimately paid almost an entire max above the cap. Hindsight its good we didn't get either but that's not the point. We could resign Parsons way over the cap but today we have no one on that rookie contract that we can blow the cap for.

So your ways to go into the LT are going to be via trading right? You have to get someone's bird rights to do this but sign and trading is practically dead. So us getting into LT is going to be by using imbalanced trades where we take back more salary than we send out.

So the only way thats going to significantly matter is by trading Chris Paul or Clint Capela, or even both in a mega trade... both are far from likely. It could matter with Eric Gordon but at his salary I think you're better off keeping him.

I think this is a whole lot of nothing. I mean id be happy to be wrong here but I just dont see how this is going to affect us significantly.

 

The only reason portland is in the conf finals is because they beat us twice. Once with gordon and paul and the other without harden in november. We would have beaten denver so no id say they are still in mediocrity. They arent beating gs.

 

It doesn't even matter. They don't have any moves to improve the team. Best they can do is re-sign their guys.

 

Robin Lopez would be a great fit if he is willing to take the MLE and Rivers isn’t.

 

Thats my thinking really outside of one thing - Harden saying there would be changes and that he wouldn't go into it. He seemed weirdly confident in that statement like something was already in the works/something was already done. The last time the Rockets were so confident they landed Chris Paul (Morey's we're upping our risk profile/have something up our sleeve). I am not sure what changes that could be but it seemed kind of odd to me the confidence which James said it.

IMO there needs to be a coaching change, in my book coaches who do not win a title usually have a 3-4 year shelf life before players start tuning them out. MDA has been here 3 years but its been a lot of the same story from him (in terms of the coaching issues) the past 3 years. Not sure if harden was referring to that or not either.

With Tillman saying on record the Rockets will go into the luxury tax it does put pressure on Morey to make some moves here. I think he will get creative with what he has, but this is where I feel the years of trading away FRPs to get under the tax line (whether it was Les or Tillman) is going to hurt the Rockets.

 

This was the year to spend. The stars aligned for them unlike any time we’ve seen. They blew it.

 

Nets did that, and still not recovered fully.

 

Talk is cheap.

DD

 

Only one of them will be in the finals.
Anyway, it is not our money, every team including rockets can spend as much as they like. It will make fans happy, I am not sure about those owners.

 

Reassuring isn't it? Someone says long ago that they'll do something and, without any prompting, keeps saying they're going to do it.

I'll believe it when they cut the checks. Just don't be stupid about it.