http://m.espn.go.com/wireless/story?storyId=8182261 Didn't see it posted. . For Rockets GM Daryl Morey, who took the phrase "all in" to new levels with his dogged pursuit of Dwight Howard. At this point, Dork Elvis has done everything short of holding a boom box in the pouring rain outside of Dwight's Los Angeles hotel … and that's probably happening tomorrow night. His strategy makes sense: You can't win the title without a top-10 player. Unfortunately for the Rockets, they've been trapped in NBA no-man's-land ever since T-Mac and Yao broke down. Last year, they barely missed the playoffs AND paid the luxury tax, which simply can't happen — in a 30-team league, you either want to bottom out or contend, but you can't be in the middle. The Rockets spent the last three years stockpiling assets and cap space for this exact moment. It's Howard, Bynum or Bust. Were there a few days when it seemed like Morey had outsmarted himself? Actually, yeah. The Rockets allowed an emerging offensive star (Goran Dragic) to leave for Phoenix (four years, $34 million), then dealt one of the league's best bargains (Kyle Lowry, owed just $12 million total for the next two seasons) for a future lottery pick to help The Howard Trade That Might Not Happen, going from two quality point guards to zero in about five nanoseconds. That's when one of my incredulous readers e-mailed me, "At what point are we going to find out that Dork Elvis overdosed on bath salts and tried to eat Kevin McHale's face off?" He salvaged that mini-crisis by giving Jeremy Lin a back-loaded offer sheet ($24.9 million, three years) that the Knicks didn't match. Why not just re-sign Dragic (a better player than Lin) instead of sweating out an offer sheet and banking on James Dolan doing the wrong thing? (Wait … I forgot … there are few safer bets in sports than James Dolan doing the wrong thing. You're right.) "We've had vicious kings and we've had idiot kings, but I don't know if we've ever been cursed with a vicious idiot for a king." (Cut to the Knicks fans nodding.) Here's the thing: The Knicks haven't worried about the financial ramifications of a basketball decision since Dolan's daddy turned the team over to him. Even the most grizzled, beaten-down Knicks diehard would admit, "Dolan might be incompetent, but you can't say he's afraid to spend money." That why I agree with what Jay Kang wrote earlier this week — this wasn't a financially motivated decision, just a spiteful one. Dolan didn't appreciate Lin's agent proactively screwing him over with a poison pill offer, and responded accordingly.
I guess none of these so called writers understand the cap aprons and its effects on the ability for a team to make player related decisions
My question is, why is Dragic better then Lin a fact, rather than an opinion. I happen to think the opposite, but this writer makes it seem like its no contest.
This thread was in the NBA Forum. I went ahead and moved it to GARM since there's a bit of Rockets talk in it : http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=223917