They should do that, and why no one on in the Houston media has asked that question is beyond me, why has no one asked McHale... "So, now that Lowry is back, and Goran has been playing so well, who starts?" And if McHale hems and haws....ask him point blank. "When Kyle is healthy does he get his starting spot back?" DD
bottom line is ...if Lowry becomes a baby about it, you trade him in the offseason. We've got to stick with the guy that's helping us win. The starting job should be Dragic's as long as he wants to be a Rocket. Our team is better with Lowry playing lots of minutes, and because of Goran's versitility, that's very possible. I hear you about ego and both players being competitive, but you don't hurt your chances of retaining your rising star by catering to a guy who you have locked up anyway. We've got to retain Dragic. If he walks for nothing, it's a huge loss. We contol Lowry, so we won't lose him for nothing. Hell, we may be able to keep him and have the best 3-man backcourt rotation in the league.
I completely concur, you can not start Lowry, he is locked up for 2 more years, you have time to make ammends with him, but if you harbor any hope of signing Goran in the offseason, you have to keep running him out there as a starter and behind the scenes tell him that he is your guy. DD
The only question that really matters to Morey when he decides whether to offer Goran Dragic $__ millions for __ years this summer is how likely it is for this contract to be viewed as an asset (great contract, worth every penny and more) instead of a liability (i.e. bad contract that you need to pay people to take off your hands). For everyone here screaming "But Morey won't overpay to keep Gogi cuz Morey NEVER OVERPAYS!", please note the following: What fans consider "overpaying" and what Morey and Les Alexander consider "overpaying" (based on, presumably some careful analysis of data) are likely quite different things. One effect of the modern day media market, which has a ton of salary cap information-- and misinformation-- floating about, is that it often turns fans into total internet/armchair misers who are far stingier with the owners' wallets the owners themselves. It's the discount shopping/groupon mentality, where fans don't just want to watch a good team, but also want to know in the back of their minds that they got their players on a cheap contract. A couple of recent examples happened here in 2010, when Morey signed Luis Scola to a 5 year, $47 million deal, with the last year non-guaranteed or partially guaranteed (in anticipation of an offer from NJ and one from Europe) and matched a full MLE, 4 year, $23.5 million, offer on ("Career Backup") Kyle Lowry made by Cleveland. Fans here were not anticipating such large number and some screamed that Morey screwed up by overpaying for these two. Some also accused Morey of overplaying his hand in restricted FA by waiting to match offers rather than signing Lowry/Scola earlier. (For the record, I was kind of anticipating lower numbers, but thought the amounts paid was fine.) It is clear now that, back then, the Rockets ownership had much higher numbers in mind for Scola and Lowry than fans did. Now, no situation is exactly the same as another, but the fact remains that, as long as the team believes that whatever contract Goran Dragic signs will be a net asset as oppose to a net liability (i.e. having greater value than just cap room) on the trade market, it would make sense to retain him. After all, the whole point of having cap "flexibility" is to either sign guys or facilitate trades, including sign-and-trades for guys.
Great post Carl. The value Morey puts on Dragic may be much higher or lower than we think. Heck he offered all types of guys big contracts this past summer. Conversely he refused to sign Brooks then dumped him. My guess is if we can't land a big name like Dwight then we are more likely to pay more for Dragic and Lee. But the first goal is still to land a superstar.
Your memory sucks. Can morey guarantee a starting job? Yes, he sure can. Will he? I seriously doubt that. Why? Because once he does there's two possible directions: 1) trade lowry. - For this direction, Morey can't predict when this will happen. There's no way he trades lowry just to push him out. Not because i say so, but because Morey doesn't do that. Not with a player with value. The trade could come this summer or next year. Morey doesn't rush. 2)keep lowry- Morey can't predict Lowry's reponse. lowry may do poorly or completely raise his game. If he manages to play better and/or Goran's shooting % dips, then why would Mchale not start lowry? Because Morey promised Goran the spot? Those promises never hold up in the NBA. It's all about how you play. Even if you go with direction #1, you may still end up with direction #2 for a significant amount of time. you can bet Goran knows this and will take it into consideration. Hw can stay here and risk having to keep proving himself with lowry on his heels, or he can go somewhere he can breathe easier. You keep arguing for Goran without considering Lowry. All you're saying is goran deserves the spot, which he does, but as long as kyle is around he's a threat to steal it back. Why? Because Goran isn't that much better than lowry. Even a small regression by goran and a small improvement by Lowry is enough to shift the spotlight back on Lowry. As much as i want goran over lowry, i can't ignore that fact. It's not all-star vs career back up, but borderline all-star vs borderline all-star. CH, what do you think Morey's max number is for goran? i get what you're saying, but shouldn't one also consider what happened to chuck? He was let go even though Morey didnt consider his contract overpaying, IIRC.
1. True. I think both the Nene offer (reported to be 4 years and close to $60 mil) and the Marc Gasol offer (something similar to that, max allowed for player with his experience) were thought to be overpaying by many here. The front office's view of Pau Gaso and his contract ($18 mil + a year) also differ greatly from the opinion of many fans here. The main question as to what Dragic is worth, to me, depends on how reliably we think he can keep up his current level of excellence or at least something similar to it. My personal opinion is that his outside shooting (44% on 3s) is probably a hot streak, but the rest of it is sustainable. As such, I wouldn't hesitate to sign him to a Scola-level contract (which, by the way, is similar in $ amounts to the first non-rookie deal signed by Ginobili), perhaps significantly more. 2. As for the Lowry vs. Dragic thing: It's irrelevant from the team's perspective. If you think Dragic is worth more than a certain amount of money, you pay him and worry about how to deal with Lowry + Dragic later. You can play them together and give both plenty of minutes, or trade one of them (a Dragic trade will likely be initially more difficult due to salary cap base-year compensation mechanics) if need be.
Two near allstar point guards equals bad idea?? I guess so. Because we are obviously the hot spot for every real major superstar.
This! And RV6, I don't think we should just assume that Lowry will start playing worse if his role changes. He can still play a lot of minutes at the point, even if Dragic "starts". In fact, he's in a complimentary role right now, and being very efficient doing it. We'll see what happens, but you are actually presuming a problem when one hasn't even developed yet. I think it would be a mistake to undermine our efforts to bring back a vital piece in Dragic, on the basis of pessimistic speculation.
Honestly, I think Portland is just fawning over Dragic the same way that we used to fawn over Chris Bosh and Nene.
I totally agree with that. Initially, I thought we should not overpay for Dragic and anything more than the Lowry deal would mean overpaying, but I have changed my mind.
A great point. Some people thought what Lowry got was too much. It's turned out to be an incredible bargain. Other people (sometimes the same ones) thought Scola's contract outrageous, when all one need do is examine the contracts of comparable power forwards around the league to know that Luis is either getting what he deserves, or is a bargain (my own belief). We're on a great ride. Why can't we just enjoy it? Why do we seem hellbent on microanalyzing every possible scenario to death? Why do we persist in finding "conflict," where conflict may not exist? Why can't we just save this until the playoffs are over for the Rockets? We'll have plenty to say then.
Remember this: Denver worked hard to convince Nene to re-sign with them in December 2011. They shipped his ass to Washington for JaVale McGee in March 2012. Again, if you can sign a talented guy to the right contract, you do it and worry about what to do with the asset later. The only thing you shouldn't do is signing a guy to a toxic contract that you cannot even give away for free.
Unless it precludes you from an equal chance to sign a clearly more talented guy to a contract (i.e., you have max cap space, you go for a max talent first and only sign the less talented guy, even to his market value, when it is clear that you cannot obtain the max guy). But I don't really see anything like that in the 2012 free agent class.
I think we will resign Dragic and Lee, and continue to push for a Dwight Howard trade. Lowry is obviously going to be an integral piece of this trade, and we'll probably have to give up K-Mart, Scola, Morris, two 1st rounders while taking on Hedo's contract. Then we sign FA Gerald Wallace and we have a solid backcourt.
