I know the first two years are guaranteed, but are the next two years after that a team option? This link says he's a free agent in 2011: http://www.clutchfans.net/players/chase_budinger and it looks like HoopsHype doesn't have the info yet: http://hoopshype.com/salaries/houston.htm I'm sure this was discussed before, but I guess there's no search function on the board to look this up?
Sham Sports is the best site for this kind of info: http://www.shamsports.com/content/pages/data/salaries/rockets.jsp http://www.shamsports.com/content/pages/data/salaries/notes/rockets.htm
http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/sports/nba/090811_rockets_budinger_agreement agent says 2 years guaranteed, with 2 team options, just like Jermaine Taylor's and dorsey.
I believe the Bird Rights limit a player's raises to 10.5%. I think Budinger is going to want more than that (he's going to want like a 300% raise). This doesn't mean we can't sign Budinger, but that we cannot use the Bird Rights exemption on him.
That's not how bird rights work. Full bird rights allow us to re-sign our own free agents to a higher amount than the MLE even if we're above the cap. To get full bird rights, a player has to play for a team for three consecutive years. It's basically how Roy and Aldridge got their massive extensions, despite Portland using all their cap space on Andre Miller.
Oops - yes, you are correct. CBud will have a salary that is less than the average NBA salary for his rookie contract, so he will be able to get a big raise (up to 300% of his previous salary).
Let's not get ahead of ourselves in term of how much Budinger will cost in the future. We are only 6 games in of his first NBA season.