I have the new CBA Salary wrt the floor is calculated like always: likely incentives are treated as active salary, unlikely incentives not. If you are not over *at the beginning of the year*, you lose your tax distribution rights. If at any time during the year you drop below the floor, you have to get back over immediately by the following day. And obviously, at end of year, only earned incentives are counted.
We have $14M in space available right now, and with Tate as matching salary that’s $21M. Or with a waive and stretch of Tate it’s $19M in space. The thing is - we can’t carry it into the season for flexibility! The space disappears at the end of the moratorium when the Brooks S&T is executed. The only flexibility” we can take into the season would be the RMLE, which can only be used to sign free agents and not in trades. We’re not going to be signing buyout guys, so that would have zero value. So it is $14M - $21M of exploding cap space that we can only use in the next 3 days with literally zero opportunity cost if we don’t take back money beyond 2024-25, since we won’t be a tax team. Not using that to improve the team by getting a forward who doesn’t kill the offense, or at least to eat money for a pick… that would be malpractice.
If true, our rotation is set. Any other roster additions should be expected to be bench warmers. They said adding shooting was important and they just didn't... if you would have told me Martin, Christopher, Garuba, Washington, Nix, Boban, WCS and Kamisky would all be gone, that we cleared 8 roster spaces and spent every dollar of our cap space, I would have been sure our team significantly improved its spacing. The lack of spacing additions, and Brooks 4 year guaranteed deal are huge bummers this off season.
Not “right now”. Only if we combine all our trades into a single SnT for Brooks…see my previous post in this thread. As of “right now”, this is where we are at, per Iko.
Nope, that’s a misunderstanding of the reporting. It’s the moratorium, so “right now” we have $65 million in space and TyTy, Garuba, Josh Christopher, and KJM are still on our team. Of course, the trades and contracts we’ve agreed to are 100% going to be executed in substance. So all those players are actually gone and the FA contracts we signed will happen on July 6th. However, there are operational levers and choices we can unilaterally make that change how we execute our end of the transactions that leave use with optionality to have up to $14M in cap space, “right now”. All those levers and choices are made on July 6th. The biggest one being whether we choose to take the Green contract into the RMLE, or the Landale contract into the RMLE, or neither. That’s entirely up to us and we have until July 6th to think about and can’t actually do it until then. If we choose the Landale contract into the RMLE, we have ~$14M in space (and Tate’s contract to trade or stretch to get up to $19M or $21M). If we choose neither, then you get what is stated in the tweet - $4.5M in space and the $7.7M room exception, which can’t be used for trades and provides no value if we carry it into the season.
As of right now: Amen — not going to be guarded at the three point line Brooks — not going to be guarded at the three point line Tate — not going to be guarded at the three point line Tari — not going to be guarded at the three point line Jabari — not going to be guarded at the three point line (127th/127 in 3P% among players who took 4 per game last year) Sengun — not going to be guarded at the three point line Landale — not going to be guarded at the three point line Jeff Green — not going to be guarded at the three point line Challenge: construct a Rockets lineup without at least 3 players defenses will ignore outside the paint
Of course he's untouchable, he's a terrible shooter and that's the identity Udoka wants for this team.
That's important context I was missing. I forgot about the sign and trade issue with Brooks. That being said, adding bodies just to add bodies could still hurt their financial flexibility in future years unless they're just adding guys on one-year deals like they did with Landale and Green. If there's an impact player to be had out there who makes sense, won't break the bank and won't create a log jam ahead of the young players, go for it. I just don't think there's a lot of guys who fit that description out there.
We're almost definitely not planning to be a cap space team next season, we're planning to be one again in two seasons based on all the reporting and how we've structured contracts. So 2 year money doesn't affect our flexibility literally at all since we'll be nowhere near the tax either. Taking on 3 year money I agree they shouldn't / wouldn't do. Grant Williams is 100% gettable on a high AAV 2 year deal + team option. PJ Washington same. Duncan Robinson has basically 2 years left, he could help us and we could get either a bad frp or a few srp's for taking his contract on for that time. Grayson Allen could give us some shooting and Milwaukee wants to be off that contract; we could probably get him + a srp into our space. Marvin Bagley, Richaun Holmes, Devonte Graham... many others. We could take them into our space for a few srp's at no opportunity cost to anything else we're trying to do, and then just waive them. Just sitting on the space and letting expire would be lighting assets on fire.
It is incorrect to say we have “unilateral” ability to get $14.5m in cap room. My main point was not considering the expanded, multi-team Brooks SnT a done deal, yet. But I’m OK if you want to go ahead and say so. Even then, I would only agree on $12.4m, because 14.5m requires Landale taking slightly less money, since he currently does not fit into a Room Exception. He’s close, but he, in fact, would have to take less 1st yr salary than he already agreed to. —————————————— But, all that aside, the Rockets don’t look at things this way. Iko and Feigen are reporting $4.5m, because that is what the Rockets are saying. They want to keep the RMLE moving forward. This means Green is going into pure cap space, and thus, they only have $4.5m left, as reported, but keep RMLE for future use.
