And some people still don't understand the basic concept that Posey = JJ + Piatkowski. Since Piatkowski has been almost worthless, Posey = JJ. They, as you say are comparable. So if we would have overpaid for Posey, we overpaid for that combo. Except in 2 years, Posey will still be playing while Piatkowski will look to regain his shooting touch while wasting salary cap space at age 35. I'll agree that JJ is having a good season similiar to Posey's at Memphis. But if I have to hear this 100% BS about how much money we saved Im going to puke. Whatever money we saved, we threw it away at the other end.
It's funny, but I can think of a couple of Posey level player coming out of the draft every year. Maybe not similar style, but similar performance. So you are advocating that we pay JP for an average of 5.8 mil for the next 4 years (by which he'll be 31) when we could sign a comparable player for rook scale contract (and still be around when Yao dynasty starts), at a position in which at least some decent players come out every year? I remind you that the reason we couldn't (or wouldn't) sign Posey in the first place is because certain players, I'll let you figure out who, ate up the cap space. You DON'T consistently overpay for contract unless you want to become the new age NY Knicks.
Oh, I forgot to mention, that's ~5.8 mil for somebody that's 12.3/4.5. Adjusted with JJ's mins he would be 16.4/6.0 in > 38 mins for ~5.8 mil (highest 6.5). That's a nice little luxury I wish we could afford. I don't try to suggest that JJ > Posey, but if we could afford to go on a shopping spree I'd be the first to suggest we sign every average role player, every coulda been, every has been and every player that I like.
You must have a reading comprehension problem. True or false, James Posey's salary = JJ + Piatkkowski. If we signed James Posey, would we have signed JJ and Piatkowski? No. Whatever money we saved signing JJ, we gave up signing Piatkowski. The Net Effect = $0 money saved. C-A-N Y-O-U R-E-A-D?
Excuse me? When trading for Rice, the only incoming Jazz contract option is exchanging Rice's "lousy contract to take on a big contract"? But when it's the Rockets, the incoming coming is something valuable? You can't have it both ways. If it was a lousy incoming contract for Utah, it would have been a lousy incoming contract for Houston as well. Since you seem to be so well versed in what teams have/had 2004 cap space, then you know that the only teams having a use for 2004 cap space prior to the 2003-04 season were those that had less than $48m committed for 2004-05 prior to the beginning of the current season. Stated another way. If I already have $60m committed for 2004-05, Rice's expiring contract has no value to me in the FA market because the cap will likely be between $43 and $45m. Subtracting Rice's $9m from my 2004-05 $60m committed leaves me still way over the cap. Why would I bother? Subtracting Rice's $9m from a team with $48m committed for 2004-05 leaves them at $39m. With an MLE of ~$5m, why would they bother to do the trade for the nearly same as MLE money? Therefore, the only teams having a possible need of an expiring $9m contract were those teams with less than $48m committed for 2004-05.... CLE - no contracts over $5m except Ilguaskas. DEN - only large contract was Camby. Had only $23m committed for 2004. No need for Rice. LAC - a good destination...oooppps...they cut him, too... MIA - Grant or Jones for Rice....in your dreams. WAS - Laettner or Stackhouse for Rice? Not happening. There you have it...a grand total of 5 potential trading partners for a $9m expiring contract. As I have asked on numerous occassions... If Rice's expiring contract were so valuable, why did Utah cut him, too? The answer...Because he had no trade value to Houston or Utah.
I believe Posey makes more than JJ and Pike together. Effectively for less money, we have JJ who is playing as well as Posey, and Pike who is not contributing much. But the keys are: 1) we can still trade Pike for someone that can contribute, thus make JJ+that guy > Posey. 2) two guys get you some insurance in case one is injured. And let me say it again: JJ is playing as well as Posey, if not better. So we don't lose anything in term of talent or money, right now. 3 years down the road, if both JJ and Pike get too old (I think JJ is stronger than his age suggests), we can get a decent younger SF. I don't see any reason $6 mil is not enough to sign a SF better than Posey. Posey is rock bottom among starting SF, and he will be over 30 when JJ gets too old. And you obviously has not noticed that JJ fits this Rox team better than Posey. It doesn't show in stats. But if you watch games, you see JJ's consistency and leadership really makes a difference, and he stepped up several times when we really needed it.
Who cares about that the lux tax unless you are Les or those who benefits from his estate. The salary cap is what is important to bring in free agents. Getting us under the lux tax by not signing our own free agents without realistically getting us significantly under the real cap costs us wins and team positioning in order to further Les's profit margins. After getting the taxpayers to build the Rockets a new standium and due to the increased value of the Rockets franchise since he took ownership (plus profits made) his move was shameless.The Rockets deserve a owner who put wins over his own profits and the fans have been punished because we don't.
Pike can be traded for someone more useful. Even Moochiee got us something back. It may be unfair to claim that Pike is worthless. JVG doesn't gave players much chance. He likes 7-men rotation, not because the 8-th man is useless, but because the first 7 men are better.
But is that cap flexibility worth not getting SAR or Sheed, which we probably could have had basically for Rice. We will see I guess.
Unlike you, the owner has to consider the long term financial health of his team. People were happy with tax cut 2 years ago, but many of them lost their jobs later. That is the price for being short-sighted.
Posey was a RFA, thus we could have has Posey, JJ (a little less than half our MLE), plus added Pike (about half the MLE) and A Griffin (mid career vet min) too if we really wanted. Our course JJ and JP would have Pike and A Griff unnecc, thus we would not have signed him. The Pike signing is what lead us to not match Posey, not the later JJ deal that opened up more due to Sacs calculation and our oppertunism than anything we had planned earlier in that offseason. Compare what we could have gotten in terms of short term production and long term positioning for adding JJ, Posey + young minimum contract versus JJ, Pike and A Griff. Those would have been the best couple extra million (Posey option) the Rockets have spent in a long time in both accounts--but especially in terms of long term acculation of additional talent as Posey is the only one of these guys with any realistic future in 4 years. The only thing we will have to show for these moves after the current contracts (Pike/JJ) expire is more money for Les and a team with more holes to fill.
The evidence is pretty strong Les has made a lot more than he lost and his team is worth a whole lot more than when he started. There is a point where focusing on "long term financial health" is greed (look at Sterling), given the context (lux tax may not even be around, taxpayer provided stadium, dirt cheap contract for Yao, profit margins he alreayd had and likely would in the future) I would say it has greed, greed, greed. I know you differ canoner, that is fine, but this is how I see it.
Gater, what the hell are you arguing with me for? Re-read my post, I was saying EXACTLY the same thing as you. All my point was that Utah traded for Rice's contract for the picks. I basically said Rice's contract itself is pretty much WORTHLESS to both them and us except allowing them to make the minimum. The rest of my post basically outlined WHY Rice's contract is worthless for Utah. Basically they CAN take any contract hey want without having to trade Rice for players.
First of all, go and do some math. We DID save money. Not a lot, which is why I didn't even bring up that moot point. Secondly, from a purely basketball point of view we had Posey, TMo, Tito Maddox, Hawk, Collier and MOOOOOOOOCHIEEEEEE off the bench last season into JJ, Pike, Spoon and AGriff this season, with the Rice trade being inconsequential either way. Yet you think we're worse off? OK, we can probably let the likes of Tito, Hawk and Collier go, but how do we get rid of Moochie? I'm guessing as well that better role players are just going to drop in our lap right?
Portland wouldn't, but Atlanta would have. Probably SAR or Sheed could have been had for little more than Rice and the #1 traded to Utah.
i want to point out a few things... dont use the knicks when explaining brilliant gm moves. the knicks still have one of the largest payrolls of any team in the nba. they are like dallas or the yankees, money is no deterrant. also, no one wants to get ripped off, no matter how much money they have. because of the luxery tax, and contract that goes over is almost twice the original amount. why would ANYONE wanna pay twice the streetvalue of a player? also, why you fools keep talkin about all the stars the rockets could have, this is JEFF VAN GUNDY, he is like larry brown in that he operates with one superstar and one very good player, and fills all other positions with worker bees. he would never coach a superstar team like dallas or portland 4 yrs ago. this team is exactly the way he likes it. if he ever brings in another star, best believe that yao or francis will be gone. as a gm, cd has fixed somethings, which leads me to believe that rudy t was probably responsible for the bad deals the team seemed to find. now continue with the crazytalk.
Let me ask you a question to start: who is getting paid the 2nd and 3rd highest on this team? Answer: MoT and Cato. Long term, what does this mean for the team? Well, in about 4 yrs in 2006, HUGE year for us. We will have to resign 2 players, assuming we want to keep them... Yao and Cat. We have ONLY 2 players committed that year. Steve and Mo. Steve, deservedly or not, will earn ~14 mil. Mo will earn 10 mil (can ya say OUCH). Assuming the cap space ~ 55 mil, that means we have to sign ~10 players with 31 mil. Throw in Posey we have 24.5 left. Of course, it'll be stupid for us NOT to resign Yao for MAX. That's another 10 - 12. With me so far? OK, 4 players, 12.5 left. Throw Cat in, how would he feel if he's getting paid less than Mo? He'll get 2nd tier money ~8+ mil... 4.5 left. We need to sign 7 players with 4.5 mil (btw, you can't use Bird Right here). Then we might get a player with a pick. If those pieces actually fit together (or that Yao becomes do dominant regardless the plays of others), I would gladly sign 4.5 mil worth of minimum players. Realistically that's not the case. Steve will be 30 (by which time if he hasn't learned to play smart, he'll be on a nice lil' decline), Cat 32, JP 31, Mo 30, the player we draft will be young (< 22). Yao, the franchaise player, will be 26. He'll be playing either with players older than him getting huge contracts, or too young for him, IN HIS PRIME. Suppose he starts to dominate (around 29 I guess), by the time we start winning the rings, Steve and co will be going into semi - retirement, eating up cap space. MoT being the biggest culprit of this problem. This is why you try NOT to overpay for talent. Seriously, Indy is paying how much for Ronron? And we're supposed to pay how much for Posey? If JJ and Pike retires, who cares? Use your picks and plug the holes.
If anybody had known Atlanta was just willing to give Sheed away, any team would have jumped on that offer. Hindsight is always 20 - 20. Yet Detroit is the only team that pulled it off.
MF2310 - I flat missed the point of your being in agreement. At any rate, you forced me to dig deeper and observe that (outside of Utah), there were only 5 teams valuing 2004-05 cap space at the time of the Rice trade. We can both use this for ammo later!
No prob Gater, but I'm semi glad you dug that up. IT IS great ammo. It's great. Well for me any ways. You pay the price of not reading carefully.
