Would Dragic be playing this well if he was extended?

Dragic + $$$ = Ryan Bowen?

 

IMO Dragić has just 1 big weakness, low self esteem. He can loose confidence in his game. Thats also the reason, why he plays better as a starter and make all this 3 pointers. Dragić when he has enough time on the court may miss first few shots, but will make a drive or 2 on the ring and voila you got the Dragon back. When starts from bench, he can start looking at the bench after those mised shots.
For playing hard: thats the only way he knows. You guys should see some games of Slovenian team with him and his brother on the court at the same time. Imagine suns run`n`gun bb and fast forward it. Problem was of course that the other our guys just couldn`t follow this crazy tempo. :grin: So it could go into a chaos. But nevertheless I loved it. When it went ok it was nashty. :grin:
IMO he prefers to stay Rocket, because of teammates and McHale`s O system. He doesn`t response well to ballhogs like it was Hedo in his third season at Suns who just killed the momentum of his game. I can see him giving a discount to Rockets, but who knows what the price will be.

Sorry for possible grammar mistakes, I hope you understood enough. I hope Houston will get one more permanet resident, one mighty Dragon.

 

Interesting, I thought there was a Gilbert Arenas clause for 2nd round picks that allowed you to go up to the MLE level, or is that no longer in play?

DD

 

Only applies to restricted 2nd rounders without bird rights. There will be a ton of ink spilled about it for Jeremy Lin.

Only possible way the Rockets could have locked up Dragic earlier would have to decline his option last off season, making him a restricted FA with bird rights, meaning they could match any offer.

 

Why didn't they do that? Or was that on Phoenix before he even came to Houston, because that seems to be a Morey type of move.

DD

 

Yes.

And yes

 

Exactly. Even when Dragic was playing back-up minutes only, it was highly unlikely for him to accept merely $2.5 million/year to stay.

 

No, the Rockets COULD have done that. But only with the blessing of hindsight would such a move even remotely make sense.

Coming off a strong finish to the 2010-11 season, Dragic would have commanded more on the open market than the $2.108 million team option amount.

The cheap 2011-12 salary, combined with being an expiring contract, made Dragic a more attractive trade asset, as was shown by his inclusion in the Pau Gasol trade. If Dragic were a restricted free agent when the lockout ended, he couldn't have been included in that deal. Hypothetically, even had Dragic been signed-and-traded (being signed to a 2011 market value deal), the Hornets quite likely would have said "no".

No team would have possibly conceived of Dragic putting together the type of performances he has over so extended a period of time. 30 out of 30 GMs would have exercised that team option at the time. Every single one of them.

Well, perhaps if a team employed Emmett "Doc" Brown or Marty McFly . . . :grin:

 

Well, 29 of 30 GMs didn't have the benefit of seeing what he does in practice. Neither did I, so I don't know if he was playing as well in practice as he is playing now as a starter...but if yes, extending him might have been the right thing to do. But hindsight is 20/20, so...

 

I'm confident Dragic will stay with the Rockets. He loves the team and his teammates, with the added fact that we're likely to make a playoff push. Plus we can beat any offer he gets simply by matching, considering he will make more here because of no income tax.

 

Beat ECONOMICALLY, yes. Heck, they can even offer him a fifth year and higher annual raises than any other team. But Dragic is an UNrestricted free agent, meaning that he can go wherever he wants, even for less money. He's going to make more money than he'll ever need, regardless, so money won't be the only determining factor in his decision.

 

I can't think of a single example of this ever happening in basketball, and quite frankly, if Daryl Morey had that much foresight to do it for Dragic, I'd want him to immediately resign from being a GM and instead start working to fix the global economy.

It does happen quite a bit in baseball; generally in the last year of arbitration, where a player's salary is commonly about 80% of what he might make on the open market, teams will negotiate a long term deal "buying out" 3 or 4 years of free agency in exchange for a substantial raise on the first year.

 

But now we are going around in circles. We can't make someone sign an extension, and Dragic's maximum extension would have been <$2.5m, so is highly questionable that his signs that.

DaDakota,

You cannot stop Dragic from being an unrestricted FA this summer if he wanted to be. If Morey pulls a stunt like you describe and forces RFA on a player by not picking up the Team Option (before he's really showcased his talent to the market), the player can then just take the 1yr qualifying offer and become an unrestricted free agent, anyhow.

Taking away a players unrestricted free agency by not picking up a team option is going to piss them off.

Talk about treated someone like an asset, then having it bite you in the ass.

 

C'mon, practice?

First, there really have not been many practices in which to see him since he had only been a Rocket for less than 1/2 season before they needed to make a decision on his option.

Second, "practice" is not as reliable an indicator for real game performance than, you know, real game performance. The Rockets, like every other team, had game film on the guy spanning a period of 3 years. He was good in some
, not so go in others.

I think Kelvin Cato has taught us about signing a guy off performance during games that don't count.

Third, it is highly doubtful that Dragic was just Michael Jordan in practices. If he had that kind of magical ability, you'd think he'd shown enough of that to the Suns to dissuade them from trading Dragic AND A FIRST ROUND PICK for the then-slumping and soon-to-be-Free-Agent Aaron Brooks


One more thing about "We should have made Goran and RFA": Remember that the Rockets were trying to maximize their cap room to pursue a high-level FA (and that's with or without the Pau Gasol trade-- they kept on the Nene pursue and also went after Marc Gasol after the Pau trade fell apart). Remember that, without other transactions, the Rockets had $7 million in cap room and would have had to amnesty Thabeet (and maybe do a couple other things) to create the room sufficient for a Marc Gasol/Nene-type? Remember that the Rockets had to use all $7 million in order to land Dalembert instead of having Jordan Hill as the starting center most of the season?

Giving Dragic a, say, $4 mil or MLE contract, would have messed up that math.

Also, if they had to match an offer for Dragic as an RFA, IIRC, the CBA would have prevented him from being included in a S&T and prevent him from traded until well into the season (March 1, 2012, I think).

 

Also, for what it's worth, not picking up Dragic's team option and instead paying him "RFA market value" on a new long-term deal would have likely cost the Rockets Samuel Dalembert.

Just saying.

 

IDK but I think his new gf would love him even more

 

Not just Dalembert, but whatever chance they may or may not have had in pursuits of Nene, Mar Gasol or any other high level free agent.

Remember, they had to make the decision on his option before the lockout was even in place (and not knowing exactly how the new CBA was going to work).

http://houston.cbslocal.com/2011/06/28/rockets-pick-up-option-on-dragic/

 

Hindsight is exactly how we judge a GM's job. If you can only know a player's worth AFTER the fact, then anyone of us could do the job.

We praise how smart Morey is being able to snag talents like Lowry and Parsons. But that's hindsight too. If he gets credits from hindsight, why can't he get blame from hindsight?

 

Dragic is making peanuts this season. He would have been able to make more had the Rockets not picked up the option. Why would he be pissed off? Of course Dragic could still take the qualifying offer and take the risk. How would he know that he was going to have a chance to showcase his worth? If not for Lowry's health, he could have just made about the same amount as a RFA but one year later.