[Chron] Justice: Alexander willing to roll dice on coach

Haywood isn't making close to 11 million. And no matter how you look at it, he's a much better CENTER than Hill. Hill can play some PF, but when you put him at 5, it was beyound terrbile.

You are not getting the point here. Cuban had him on the bench and Dallas didn't have a problem. As long as money is not the problem, the team can have more asset. But if money is a probelm, eg owner is NOT "willing to spend", then that contract becomes a problem.

It is Les's money, he has the right to decide, I have no problem with that. But just don't make it sound like Les is "willing to spend". He is not ,just like most of the other owners.

It's Les doged a bullet, not Morey.

 

You are wrong on so many levels here I dont know where to begin.

-The Rockets last season traded McGrady's contract for basically Kevin Martin and fillers, not Iggy/Dalembert. They could not have traded for both.

-The trade did not go through because of Philly's unwillingness to not move Iggy, they were trying to move Brand not Iggy. Feigan, who i consider a pretty reliable source, stated that the Rockets would have had to take on Brands contract at the time to get any deal done. No Thank you.

-Your argument about owners "willing to spend" still makes no sense to me. I would love for you to give me an example of a good owner that spends more than the market price for free agents in comparison to Les Alexander. And please dont bring up Mark Cuban. I dont have time for that.

Most if not all max free agents superstars litterally fall in your lap. You dont just say I will spend more than the next guy and they come flocking. The way you attract free agents is A. Have a team in place that they could win with, and B. Have the flexibility and pieces to trade for those players. The Rockets currently have both.

The only thing they dont have is an available All Star THAT ANOTHER TEAM IS WILLING TO GIVE UP, and a top draft pick. However they have the pieces to trade for them both. The only thing they dont try is tanking for a high draft pick, and thank God they dont believe in that.

 

Yes Cuban has him on the bench as a third string Center, that is the problem when you pay someone that amount of money.

And you are right, he is not making 11 Million this season... He is making 10 Million IN 2014!! around 7 million this season after looking it up.

-Also Jordan Hill was not brought in and paid to be the starting or backup Center. He was brought into the trade to be a project PF/C to develop. Nothing more, nothing less.

They had about enought cap space to sign a backup center like .... Brad Miller... and guess who they got... Brad Miller. Love Brad or hate him, he was their option at that price tag.

They were already over the lux tax at that point anyways and decided that Brendan Haywood was not good enough to renounce either of Luis Scola or Lowry to have the cap space.

Morey and Les dodged a bullet because Morey's job is judged on how he manage salaries, and make good moves. Les is ultimately the one who writes the check so yes he dodged a bullet too.

 

Well, the example I mentioned earlier maybe not good enough, but you should get the idea.

When was the last time you see Les go up Lux tax meaningfully after mid season? Isn't that telling you something?

Sometimes when you need to get good talent, you have to take something bad, like a bad "contract". I'm not saying bad contract is the purpose, it's not. But good talent comes with bad contracts otherwise you won't get it. That means you'll go over lux tax next year or so.

We don't know what is benhind the door, but if the team never goes over lux tax but always the other way for many years, you can safely assume that owner has given the order. And it will limit GM's ability to do the best trades to improve the team. How hard is it to see that?

Well, you "don't have time" for good owners who truely willing to speand money like Cuban, no wonder Les is such a great owner in your eyes.

 

You are still looking at "cap space", man. Everything is based on "cap space" for you , just like Alexander. No wonder you can't see the big picture.

Haywood is a better center than Hill, isn't that clear? He'll make Rockets a better team than Hill. Why do you care about how much money he makes if you are truely "wiling to spend"? You can go over lux tax and grab the best players available, no matter how much he makes.

If Les doesn't have the lux tax limitation applied on Morey, there is no bullet to dodge, his job is just to assemble the best product on the court.

But if he told Morey to stay under lux tax, now Moery has a bulltet to dodge.

And that makdes Les Anlexander no better than other owners. It has been proven for many years just by looking at team salary and mid season payroll trends.

Mory made the best out of the limitation doesn't mean Morey can't do even better if Les gives him more money to operate.

 

Its more than just Rick not playing the young players, I believe Rick is a top 3 coach, one of the best to ever coach the game. The Rockets FO knows this. The Rockets are not Rebuilding but Restructuring, We have a solid core group. Even though we traded Shane and AB, we still have two starters that would be bench players on any other team (Chuck and Chase), and we still are a plus .500 team and the best division the league has ever seen! Much of this credit is due to RA. The players deserve alot of credit also. But Rick is what I would call senile. While watching the Games and watching Rick coach, Im sure Morey and Les sees some of the same things that we are seeing.



*Has a tendency to show favoritism with players and PT

*His offense is High Motion, But he tends to overplay starters. This means that in 4th quarters or OT's we are unable to run an effective offense because of fatigue. OT record like 2-6

*During the first half of the season, He stuck to his game rotation regardless of what was going on during the game. (PPat could be 5-5 from the field but gets taken out while hot never to see the court again after reaching 15 min)(Scola could be 2-15 played 40 min getting abused on D and not Pat would still sit)

*He doesnt talk to individual players during timeouts. He congregates with assistants coaches addressed the team. He rarely pulls a player aside to individually coach during games.

*During the first half of the season he would never call timeout to stop runs, we would give up a double digit leads before he would call timeout. (Some of RA characteristics have changed since the first half of the season, I am sure DM had something to do with that)

*He is forced to develop the young talent. (During the first half of the season Rick would not play the young talent. Even blowouts he rarely played the young players, would rather play the Brads and Jareds)

*Doesnt put big enough emphasis on defense(even though he doesnt have much to work with)

*As long as we kee Jack Sigma around we will still be running the Princeton offense

I am definitely not trying to bash Rick. I have seen his brilliance over these past four years. And I can make a list as above of things he has does Good. But Les and Morey want All-stars, the want All-Rookie teams, Televised Tv Games. When Morey brought in C.LEE, T.WILL, Dragic, These are guys that can Play, They all can create for themselves, are young, good contracts. Morey has made RA job alot easier than it could of been, I just dont think Rick did a good job utilizing all of the tool that he had available and it cost us the Playoffs.

 

I understand your point but you haven't provided a concrete example.

Haywood is garbage, it doesn't matter that Hill is worse because we aren't looking for a short-term fix. There's no point in sacrificing the next 5 years of flexibility just to barely improve at one position.

Iguodala, who's to say that he's a better player than Martin? Because we sure as hell can't get them both in the TMac deal, Philly wanted either Brand's contract gone or better prospects from NY. That means that the Rockets would have had to take on the salary that NY was dumping and you can't do that AND get Martin and Iguodala.

So really you haven't provided an example that proves your point, you've only pointed out that the Rockets could be marginally better in the short term while overspending on terrible contracts.

 

I agree that example may not be good. You can discard it. Since we don't know what is benind the door which might allow Rockets to get good players while go over lux tax, those examples are not easy to find.

So I'll give you another example: Rockets traded Rice to got a big trade examption, and some examptions later on, I don't really recall them used the examptions to get an impact player. More often than not, they expirres.

Most GMs will use them if there is no lux tax limitation from owner, I believe.

 

No they don't. Cleveland and Toronto are still sitting on their $15 million from LeBron and Bosh. I mean the Baron Davis trade is about as concrete and example I can give to prove you wrong. Davis would have fit PERFECTLY into that exception but they still ended up giving the Clippers Mo Williams and Moon to make salaries match because Williams isn't a bad contract and Moon is good young talent. The Cavs could have simply bought the Clippers lotto pick in exchange for taking Davis contract but they didn't because Clippers wanted Williams to replace Davis.

Think about who would trade away $10 million of talent to receive back $3 million, you're basically talking about trading an overpaid player for a good young player. Or you're talking about trading an underpaid star for a good young player. In both cases one of the teams involved gets screwed, the circumstances have to be perfect for such a trade, it's very rare.

 

Rice? as in Glen Rice? Are you serious? he was out of the league 6 months after we traded him because his body broke down. plus we got jon amaechi (isnt this the gay guy) worst. example. ever.

 

The NBA has a salary cap for a good reason. Every GM and Owner operates, or trys to operate around the salary cap for a good reason.

The exceptions are teams like Orlando that are seriously gambling the success of future of the franchise if their franchise player leaves with the contracts of players like Gilbert Arenas and Hedo Turkoglu.

If you dont operate within the lux tax, you not only spend your owners money foolishly, you also handicap your team if you need to move players to other teams who dont want to take on bad contracts.

You can see from prior history what happens when GM's like Isiah Thomas overspend for players like Eddie Curry and Jarred Jefferies because they help you win now, but in all actuality, those bad contracts hindered the flexibility so much that it actually kept them years and many bad seasons away from having the flexibility to sign players that actually can help you win like Amare and Melo.

The Rockets are not even one full season removed from Yao Ming/Tracy McGrady's contracts and already have the flexibility to go after max free agents.

Morey is not going deep into lux tax with Long Term Contracts to not just spend lux tax, but to keep flexibility to sign their own Superstars in the future.

Morey has said in multiple interviews-

"credit Mr. Alexander, he gives us whatever tools we need to be able to have the ability to make whatever moves we think will upgrade the team. He only asks that we spend wisely."

- I dont know about you, but unless he is straight up lieing, Les has given him free reign to make whatever decisions he thinks are best for the franchise, and only asks that he just doesnt spend foolishly.... I think thats very fair, and very few owners allow their GM to spend "without asking first" so to speak.

-So I guess I dont understand fans that want him to spend like a drunken sailor... Do you want Morey to be able to build a championship team????... Ok, I take that as a yes.... Well in order to build that championship team he needs to make moves to aquire All-Star talent.... You dont aquire All-Stars with Large long term contracts for players who arent that good. Good contracts attract trade partners now and in 5 years.

Taking on a contract like Brendan Haywood would not have helped this season because A,) he is not good enough to beat out Chuck Hayes or Brad Miller for playing time under coach Adelman, and B.) Would have seriously hindered the future because the team would have been stuck with a bad contract that would be extrememly difficult to move in order to sign or aquire an All-Star talent with a big contract.

 

WOW....

 

Well, that sucks. I just want to see who they sign and what he does.

If they get Stan Van Gundy (who is a very good coach, and will make for very entertaining CF threads) I would'nt be too upset. The Spurs assistant coach doesn't sound bad either.

My prediction is that Morey will get the new coach a Center and SF through the draft or free agency within his first couple years, and we will have a better record and make the playoffs because of it as well as benefit from a new motivated coach (maybe). As well as benefit from a Western Conference that has gotten a little weaker recently.

I think we still won't get past the second round without a star or a player who develops into a star (unless this new coach is a defensive genius like Tom Thibodeau and we 04' Pistons our way into the 3rd round eventually).

If Rick signs with Miami and we don't have a better record or reach the playoffs, the Rockets will look very bad. And worse case scenario, Miami finds a center/point guard/ or bench and wins a title with Rick and we still suck fans will be very angry about this decision.

I'm not against the decision if it makes us better with results, but the Rockets management/ownership is putting themselves out there with this move. If it works, they deserve a lot of praise for a gutsy call and we should reward them as fans. If it blows up in their faces and we get worse and watch a great coach walk out the door and succeed elsewhere with more talent, fans should voice thier displeasure or appreciation by voting with thier feet or money either way. That reward or punishment is the only real power fans have.

 

I'm aware of all of the above, although my post was not intended to be a salary cap lesson. I read much more than I post and have read almost everything Bima has posted on the matter. Because of him, I find myself with a well above average understanding of the NBA salary cap.

As to Iggy and Dalmbert: I would have loved to have them too. But have you even begun to think about what it would have cost to get them? You mention 2Pat, but do you really even think we would have him (Philly likely would have required our first round pick in any trade that included Iggy) or Scola? This team would have had to completely strip itself of it's assets to even get Philly to entertain an offer for Iggy because of how highly Philly views him and how highly they think other teams view him.

And who the hell said Iggy was even on the market? The Sixers have been "shopping" Iggy for like the last 3 seasons, so it isn't like someone jumped on a deal that we should have taken.

When the opportunity has been there, Les has been willing to take on salary. I don't particularly like the guy and think he seems like a douche, but he isn't a bad owner.

 

If I had read this post first, I would have never had to respond to his post. Nice job.

 

How can people continue arguing this point?!?! I mean really who would you rather have? A third string Brendan Haywood or Lowry and Scola?

The answer is obvious yet too many of the posters on here have blinders on due to some unfounded hatred of Les Alexander.

 

I hate it when people post and really don't know what they are talking about.

The MAX we could spend on a free agent last year was the mid-level exception. That is it. You are only able to go above the salary cap and into luxury tax territory when you are resigning your own players. And guess what? We did just that and resigned arguably our two best players Kyle Lowry and Luis Scola.

Please do a search, type in BimaThug, and look for all his posts on the salary cap. You could learn quite a bit from it.

 

This is the way I see things...
Rockets want to keep Rick.
Rick does not want to come back.
Rick wants to win a Championship before retiring (an uphill battle w Rockets).
Rockets respect what Rick has done here despite the decline of two brittle Super Stars.
No way Rockets rip Rick in the media for wanting to leave.
Rockets won't have to pay a coach during the lock out.
2012 Lock Out ends.
Rockets hire Mario Elie as Head Coach.

 

I don't like the idea of letting Adelman go. He's a proven winner, and he's proven that he knows how to get the best out of his young players. But i also have to give some credence to the idea of taking a risk, and going after the next young Pop. I think the odds are definitely against us striking gold, but the truth is that Adelman cannot be relied on to be our long-term answer at the helm at his age. Given the fact that it's not likely we'll be contenders next year, I see the wisdom of making the change now, giving us a year to develop chemistry and get the players use to a new system. I have a lot of confidence in Morey, so if anyone is going to make a coaching change, i trust him to get it right. But one cannot look at Adelman's track record and be comfortable with the idea of letting him walk in exchange for an unknown quantity. Still, as a Texans fan and an Astros fan, I am of the opinion that being mired in mediocrity (that's being kind to both franchises) is much worse than betting it all. And even though i think the Rockets are far from mediocre with Adelman at the helm, there is a better coach out there ...somewhere.

I do have to admit, however, that Morey must find an inside big, or it won't matter who the coach is. But i expect him to find a way to get it done.

 

Batman: Thank you for this post. You have described my feelings about Uncle Les exactly - especially about the crappy way Rudy T was treated. As I have posted before, under Les' tenure, it is the head coach who takes the fall for the failure of his organization. It was this way with Rudy T, JVG and now it's Adelman's turn to get thrown under the bus. The Rockets are in the shape they are in today primarily because of the inept decision-making and poor leadership of the entire management team and that all starts with the man at the top.