Is this one of the worst contracts ever? I feel like Morey was hunting this guy (when he was actually good and not afraid to shoot) for years and finally had a chance to get him, but overpaid. Now we’re stuck making the bed for a player that has added NO value for us the last two seasons. We’re mussing our on talent left and right over this contract. See the warriors wouldn’t make a mistake like this (just saying). Man what a bad contract; Morey is stuck with this one and I don’t think he can out smart his way out of it. Thoughts?
Having Ryan Anderson on this team isn't really hurting us. And no, it's not one of the worst contracts ever. It might have cost us Ariza. That's about it. Fans are trying to pin an underwhelming offseason (so far) on Anderson. He has little to do with it.
Only clicked on this for the slightest hope that the next words were....... has been traded. Shame on you OP
Look at the money he makes and what he produces on the court. It's the worst contract in franchise history. There are people here who will settle for him playing "well" on the road. Why the hell can't a $20M/yr professional athlete play well in home games? It's insane. I wish him well in his personal life, much love. But professional life Ryan Anderson is a piece of ****.
Anderson was a starter averaging nearly 30 mpg on a team that won 55 games. Are you really going to say he added no value that season? And the results that year were instrumental in luring Chris Paul. What talent have the Rockets missed out on due to this contract? Even if Anderson could magically be taken off the books tonight, the Rockets would still be an over the cap team. It's actually more beneficial to the Rockets to keep him, rather than ditch him, at this point... because the upside is that you could at some point use him as salary filler in a trade. And if you ditched him, you don't have any additional financial resources. (And by the 2019-20 season, you can make a strong case that he'll actually be a positive asset due to his expiring deal.) The dynamics that led Morey to save Ryan aren't unique to Houston. See Timothy Mozgov and the dozens of other bloated July 2016 contracts, which are a big part of why the league as a whole is at a stalemate right now — hardly anyone has cap room. And no, it's not that Morey can't move Ryan. He's not stuck. Just look at Mozgov, who is a much worse player but has been traded twice! It's a matter of there not being enough upside (i.e. because Houston is capped out regardless) for it to be worth it for Morey to give up the assets (future picks) that it would take to unload Ryan. As for the Warriors comp, it all goes back to 2016 and the lack of cap smoothing. That was the pivotal offseason based on the cap spike and availability of KD, and GSW entered it off a 73-win season that somehow didn't end in a title. Basically the perfect storm in terms of making them incredibly desirable yet somehow not a full-fledged bandwagon move since they didn't win the title. Meanwhile, that was the year the Rockets went 41-41 — by far the worst, most underachieving season of Morey's decade-plus tenure in Houston. It was an extreme one-year outlier that came at the worst possible time. That's the difference between the GSW results in 2016 FA and the HOU results in 2016 FA. (And even though most guys, like Ryno, were majorly overpaid that summer and the Rockets had major perception issues at the time, Morey somehow still managed to get a significant bargain that summer in Eric Gordon. Nene was a big bargain, too. That's how good Morey is.)
If there is one thing this board needed, it's a thread talking about Ryan Anderson and his contract. OP with the save.
Bottom line: That particular year, Ryno got market value. Overpaid? Yes. Would less have gotten him? Probably not. He was going to get in that range from someone... It was us. And most of us were excited. Fact.
This. The reality of the situation is this: Fans want upgrades, but the Rockets are capped out, so they have to be patient and wait for asking prices to come down to the level of the financial resources (or trade assets) that they have available. Why are the Rockets capped out? Because Morey built an absurdly good basketball team that just won 65 games and has three max-level (or close to it) players in Harden, CP3, and Capela, and keeping together a team like that is supposed to be expensive. You're not supposed to have cap room when you're this good. Unfortunately, the Warriors effectively broke the system with two historic outlier signings in the last three years (Durant to a 73-win team because of the cap spike, and Cousins for the MLE because of the other side of the cap spike bubble), and now even a 65-win team isn't guaranteed to be enough. So everyone wants a shiny new toy to give them hope. The Ryan Anderson deal isn't the problem. For whatever reason, folks have a hard time chalking it up to essentially amazing luck on the part of Golden State, and Ryan is the easy punching bag... even if it doesn't make sense.
