Go look up the trade to see what we lost, and what we had to take back in return for Rice (hint: manboobs) For the team you are a fan of, would you rather that said team retool their roster through the draft, or save the current owner a few million bucks? Your choice.
1. Rice was an expiring contract. His contract was coming off the books by the end of the season anyway. 2. We gave them a 1st round pick, a second round pick and a conditional 2nd round pick to take Rice. 3. We had to take back John Ameachi in that trade and I believe he actually had multiple years left on his contract but was so bad that he never played a game with us. It was a trade that was designed for nothing else but to keep us from going over the Luxery Tax threshold. There was nothing about the trade that was designed to make the team better. http://www.clutchfans.net/news/1118/rockets_send_rice_to_utah_sign_jackson/ There was only 1 positive about the whole trade and that was the trade exception we recieved. It was a 6.5 million trade exception. I think we broke it up and used it on Tyrone Lue and Juwan Howard in the TMac trade.
Well we didn't actually need it for the Mcgrady trade. The TE was included just to extend it for another year. We ultimately ended up using it on Mike James.
My bad. I didn't know that draft picks were involved in the trade. The media just reported it as a trade of Rice for Amaechi, so I assumed that it was just a salary dump and garbage for garbage. Instead it was garbage + draft picks for garbage, so basically draft picks for nothing. You're right, it was a terrible trade.
That 1st rounder turned out to be the 21st pick of the 2K4 draft, I think. Utah traded that pick to Dallas, who selected Pavel Podzhokin. Given that the Rockets already had a 7'5'' center on the team, Pavel probably wasn't gonna be their pick. Guys like Kevin Martin, Beno Udrih, Delonte West, and Chris Duhon were available, though... so if they were planning on trading away the entire backcourt in the TMac deal (did they know it on draft day?), I guess one of those guys would have been nice. Anyhow, water under the bridge... incidentally, the Rockets just got Utah's own 1st rounder from 2004 (16th overall selection Kirk Snyder) for pratically nothing. Poetic justice, no?
