Help me understand.... Chandler Parsons

Wait - I forget now but if Bosh signed and we resigned Parsons, would we have had Ariza, Parsons, AND Bosh all on this team?


JFC.

Probably one of the biggest pendulums in franchise history. Sadface.

 

^ not Ariza

 

Ariza no, yes to everything else

 

It wasn't that they "couldn't" keep Parsons but instead that they choose not to keep Parsons.

It's like Clutch said, if they had signed Bosh with their cap space then they could have exceeded the cap to sign Parsons. If that had occurred then they felt that they would have had a championship quality roster so the fact that Parsons contract was pretty much untradeable didn't matter much to them. We would have had all the major pieces so there wasn't really a need to trade Parsons.

Once Bosh resigned in Miami we could have still resigned Parsons but his salary would have eaten up all of our cap space. The Rockets also didn't think that a team with Parsons as our third best player was a true championship contender. In order to become a contender then further major moves would be necessary and that's where Parson's contract became a problem. If we were capped out and didn't have the flexibility to trade Parsons (due to the structure of his contract) then we were very limited on acquiring other major pieces.

 

No. There would be no way we would have gotten Ariza. It would have been Bosh and Parsons, with no room to really make any other moves.

 

Follow the money.

Parson's contract, because of the Mavs jacking up the price with their offer, would have been worth more than he was able to contribute to a championship contender. It was easier for Houston to sign Trevor who costs less and contributes more to his role.

Basically it wasn't worth giving up our financial flexibility when the obvious solution was to let him walk.

The BEST solution would have been signing him to an early extension.

The Jerkiest one would be requiring him to stay within the confines of his contract, at his old salary.

However, we agreed to let him walk, as per an agreement with Parson's agent who represents Dwight.

We basically traded Parsons for Dwight Howard. I think we won.

Have fun Dallas, with your first round exit and expensive pretty boy with a flat shot.

 

Short answer with sources for more digging if you prefer:

The Rockets can always go over the salary cap to sign their own players back if they have their Bird Rights or some form of them. The Rockets had Parsons' full Bird rights because of his years of service with the team. So they could sign or trade for anyone they wanted with their cap space, including either Bosh or Ariza, and then resign Parsons.

However, this would give them essentially three max players, and to this point no team has really managed to properly balance the finances to carry four max players. Signing a third max player like Parsons would have basically said "this is our final core" and the Rockets could have no longer added anyone to the team except with contracts on the level of the MLE. In the end, based on the performance we've already seen from the Howard-Harden-Parsons trio, it was decided that it wasn't a championship trio and it was better to preserve the chance to continue hunting for a better roster rather than lock this one in (with or without Ariza).

The reason the Rockets WOULD have signed him if Bosh had been signed was that Les Alexander would (based on his history) have been willing to suffer a future luxury tax bill for the sake of having a big four the quality of Howard/Harden/Bosh/Parsons. The same could not be said of Howard/Harden/Parsons/Ariza.

 

Perfectly on point. As usual.

 

Should've traded Parsons for something..

 

This is not how you play chess. The plan was to get Bosh and resign Parsons. Morey knew there was a chance Bosh would stay in Miami (especially if Lebron decided to remain there). I'm sure that he knew that he wouldn't match a max offer on Parsons if Bosh didn't come here.

Letting Parsons prance off to Dallas and getting Ariza here at half the price has worked out fine for us so far.

 

Imagine if this team could have landed Bosh and gotten Ariza (impossible I know). That team could have own 70.

 

The first thing you need to know is that there is a rule in the NBA which states that teams are allowed to go over the cap to re-sign their own players.

So for example, say a team is just barely under the salary cap. And the contract is up on a player on your team who was making $1 million dollars per year. He played great for your team, and he is now going to be worth way more than $1 million dollars. Teams might want to pay him $10 million dollars now. But since your team was so close to the cap, you can't re-sign him for $10 million dollars or your team would be over the cap.

So the NBA allows teams to go over the salary cap in order to re-sign their own players so that they don't have to let their own players walk because they can't afford them.

So, in Parsons' situation, his contract was up. The Rockets created a lot of cap space to sign a high-salary guy like Bosh. Here is what the Rockets' salary situation looked like:




They had current players under contract, and free space to sign a guy like Bosh.

If they signed Bosh, they will now be maxed out:




But what about Parsons? Now there is no money to pay Parsons... especially because he's going to get paid a lot this year. Well, remember, teams can go over the cap to re-sign their own players. So it would look like this:



So the Rockets were trying to sign Bosh AND go over the cap to sign Parsons. That was the ideal scenario.

So, what would happen if the Rockets struck out on Bosh and then decided to re-sign Parsons? It would look like this:



Parsons would fill out the empty space and the Rockets would have no room to sign any big-money players. That means, they would be stuck with their team. No 3rd star. Parsons would be the third star.

And with the contract that was offered to Parsons, it would be VERY hard to trade. So the Rockets wouldn't even be able to trade Parsons for a better player in the future if they wanted. They'd be stuck.

So what did Morey do? He let Parsons walk and picked up Ariza for half the price on a much more flexible contract, and signed players for minimum deals or 1 year contracts. That way, they have a replacement for Parsons, and still have the cap space and flexibility to try again to get a really good free agent after this season.

If they would have kept Parsons, they wouldn't have any ability to go after a free agent this year or anytime in the next several years.

That's the gist of it. My pictures aren't entirely accurate, either.

 

Tried to rep bmd. Too soon.

 

With Parsons, Rockets have no flexibility to jump from pretender-contender.

They take a minor step back (if any) to assure a chance to become true contenders.

 

And as you can see with how the Bird Rights work with the salary cap, the Rockets had to wait on Bosh's answer before making a final decision on Parsons.

Incidentally, I believe it is because Miami had something related to "Bird Rights" in Bosh (because he came to Miami via sign-and-trade from Toronto) that they could offer him an additional max year, which seemed to have sealed the deal for him resigning there.

 

Since it was answered, I wanted to also add that people were saying we let Parsons go too soon for little chance at Bosh/Lebron/Melo/Etc. However, I never read the argument that if we were to let Parsons go NEXT summer, what options are out there if we do NOT land a third star?

The point I am trying to make is: even if we miss(ed) on those stars, we had a lot of options to fill in our 3 spot (Lance, Vince, Ariza, Paul Pierce,...). Next summer, we will not. So, that was also factored into the risk, I believe.

 

They let him go early because that was what they agreed to with Feigen when they signed Dwight

 

Yes. That was reported later on as well. But, I think that having replacements for Parsons was easier this year than it would've been next. I think that had to have been calculated at some point.