First Tucker and now Black, two rotation players with both on nice deals, in my opinion. Morey found the Rocks solid depth and insurance for the "i" word. I love having Black back!
Why did the 26-win Lakers drop him? Did he want too much money? I hated it when we lost this guy in the past...
He made nearly twice as much last year as he will this year for the Rockets. Lakers waived him so his second year wouldn't get guaranteed. On July 1st, 2017, the Los Angeles Lakers cleared space on the roster and in the salary cap by waiving Tarik Black, the team announced Saturday. Per Spotrac, Black was set to make $6,655,325 next season, but the contract was only guaranteed after July 4, 2017.
Opened up money for them to sign KCP. Also, they now have Lopez, Zubac and and Bryant at center. Just no room for him to get minutes behind Brook when they are trying to develop their younger guys. I like Black, I think he's about as solid of a backup C as there is in the league, having him as a 3rd center is a great luxury.
I very much understand the reasoning of getting a 3rd center. It makes a ton of sense because Nene is already very old in terms of basketball years, and we likely will need to rest him even more than we did last season. Pretty sure we all know this, and it needed to be done. But we have Chris Paul. And we have James Harden. There is one thing those two guys can do, and that is make centers look good. I 100% understand that Tarik Black is better than both Montrezl Harrell and Nanu Onuaku at the moment. Honestly, this signing makes me more confident that Nanu will be traded to another team, but at the same time I will not be a fool and dismiss Nanu as a scrub and lose all faith in him because he had 5 or so lousy summer league games. The small sample size is very small. Meanwhile, in the D-League Nanu played 43 games, and he looked very solid in it. I may be wrong on this, but I believe a D-League team is much better than a Summer League team. Nanu is with his flaws because even there he was a fouling machine, but he was still capable of being a solid contributor on one of last year's best D-league teams. Now, say if we intended to keep Nanu as our 3rd center. Obviously that's no longer the case, but if it were then he would be playing every single second with either Chris Paul or James Harden. I would be confident in both players at making most centers in the league look somewhat competent and that includes Nanu. It's sort of hard to form my thoughts here, but what Im trying to say is that a 3rd string center is very important, but at the same time not to the point where it's do or die. If Nene is out for the playoffs again then there will be no 3rd string center out there to contain the damage. Yes, Tarik does get those minutes in the Spurs series where Harrell didn't, but the damage would already be done. Nene is very important, and the sole purpose of having a 3rd center is to keep Nene healthy and off the court for as long as possible in the regular season. Still, you don't earn trophies for the regular season unless your name is Russell Westbrook. If we lose any of our primary 8 players, and yes we only have 8, then it could spell doom in the playoffs. The BAE in my eyes was an opportunity to secure a 9th and give us a primary 9. Instead, we used it for a back up for one of our primary 8. (I thought we had a 9 man rotation last season, but it turned out that MDA didn't trust Dekker which gave me a sad.) The BAE was a very important thing we had, and I'm not mad or sad at the fact that we gave it to Tarik because I do understand the importance of having a 3rd stringer. I'm not even sure anyone here is mad at the fact that we signed Tarik. I think everyone is glad, but I do understand that people are a bit disappointed that we used the BAE on Tarik because of what it may have meant. I'm not saying use the BAE on a guy like Brandon Jennings, but players like Tony Allen, Luc Mbah a Moute, JaMychal Green, Brandon Bass, Terrence Lolnes, and Mo Speights may all be better players than Tarik is at the moment, and all could be the 9th man that played 10 to 15 minutes in the playoffs. Will Tarik really play minutes in the playoffs if both Nene and Capela are healthy? I may be wrong about this, but I don't think he be apart of the rotation unless there's an injury, there's foul trouble, or garbage time. I'd throw the BAE at Luc 100% of the time over Tarik. At the same time though the Rockets (and other teams) likely already did that but Luc can get more with the Clippers. I don't know. This is why we're all just fans because we don't know what's going on in the background and who is getting offered how much. So, it's unfair to question the front office for not going for "your guy" because they probably did, but failed. Maybe Tarik was the best we could get for the BAE, and if so that's cool. Or maybe getting Black was a necessity because Nanu is 100% gone and we needed a 3rd center. (I don't completely buy the idea that Morey got scared by 5 underwhelming Summer League games.) The point of this paragraph is: who knows what's happening. Either way we got our 3rd center and that is always welcomed no matter the method. So, again, I'm not mad at the Tarik signing nor the fact that the BAE was used, but I can be disappointed that the BAE was used. Overall, I am still happy with it. I'd probably feel different if Luc ended up getting a similar deal with another team tho. I always said after the CP3 trade the Rockets needed to do a few things. Find better replacements for Tyler Ennis, Lou Williams/Corey Brewer, and Montrezl Harell and also get that 9th man(Dekker UPGRADE.) So far we got the LouBrew upgrade in Tucker and the Montrezl upgrade in Tarik. Still looking for that Ennis upgrade and that 9th man. So far it looks like it may not be for sure upgrades, but definitely replacements of Ennis in both Bobby Brown and Isaiah Taylor and a potential replacement of Sam Dekker in Troy Williams if kept. Chris Paul - Bobby Brown - Isaiah Taylor James Harden - Eric Gordon Trevor Ariza - PJ Tucker - Troy Williams(?) Ryan Anderson - Zhou Qi - Cam Oliver(issa sleeper?) Clint Capela - Nene - Tarik Black(10) - Nanu Onuaku That's 15 men if Troy is retained. I'm completely unaware on who has the "2-way contracts" on this team, but I'm going to assume Zhou, Zay, and Cam all have regular NBA contracts which means they won't count as the 16th and 17th roster spots. I hope I'm wrong about that, but otherwise this would mean that in order to clear room for an upgrade at the 4 and 1 then Nanu and Taylor must both be cut or traded. The roster obviously isn't finished, but it seems like Troy might have to play the "Dekker" role next season in being the 9th man if he wants to play and play the under back up 4 spot and also occasionally play the 3 when a non-big DNPS. I love Troy, but like I mentioned before I'd rather have a legitimate 9th man that will be played in the playoffs. I think if kept then Troy will play of a lot of minutes in the regular season, but he may be riding bench once the playoffs start. Stuff like this is why I would love to be a GM, but I'll forever be stuck to my day job lol. Building an NBA team is like solving an ever changing puzzle. (No, I'm not saying I would be a good GM. Just that it would be fun.) TLDR ; Tarik signing is a 8/10. Not bad at the moment. Could end up becoming a 5/10 depending how the rest of free agency plays out, but likely to remain and an 8 since in Morey we trust.
Best signing of the last 48 hours.... only signing. Underrated guy, should take the next step due to CP3.
I really hope the rockets develop zhou qi instead of trading him. I see him turning into a solid player with the 5 games hes played so far. He has good defensive awareness and also great tools on defense. I honestly doubt we trade him due to our ties in china. But he's to not trading him 3ven id I'm in the minority
I saw Black's 16-17 highlights. I was impressed with his dunks, P/R ability, and shot blocking. He even stole the ball, and showed he can pass to the cutter. The best thing he brought was energy and hard work. He is a better player, as compared to his first stint with our Rockets.
i love black but agree with some of the posters here saying that we had bigger needs than a 3rd string center. we still have second string PG and PF spots open. that's a solid critique of this signing, although black at this price is a steal... and insurance for nene was necessary. remember that paul tends to get injured a lot too. yes harden will be the PG when paul is out, but he wont play 48 minutes at PG in those games and we dont want bobby brown out there unless its garbage time. taylor is solid but i have a feeling he'll be traded as one of those NG guys in a melo deal. the next signing should be a PG for the vet minimum. jennings is too inefficient. my first choice would be sergio rodriguez. solid shooting numbers and high assist numbers. second choice would be barbosa for solid shooting without the assists.
i'm high on Taylor and think that our PG depth chart will be CP3, Harden and Taylor going into the season. And if CP3 goes down for a length of time, i think Harden and Taylor can man the PG spot. I agree that we appear to have a hole at the PF position, but given the waiting game with Melo, we'll need to see how that shakes out before we sign anyone. I think the Oliver add could surprise, but clearly other than sliding Ariza over to the 4 for stints, we don't have a backup 4. Then again, positionless basketball is becoming the new norm...
I don't think Black is your "third string center" in the sense that he only plays in case of injury. We have a situation where we have issues with Capela's stamina (only played 23 mpg last season, got winded when asked to play more upon Nene's injury) and Nene needing to be preserved for playoffs. I bet Black ends up playing pretty regular minutes. In fact, don't be surprised if he ends up being the starting center. As for the other positions, I think the thought process here is not that they don't need them, but rather that what the team gets for the BAE isn't going to be significantly better than what they can get with the vet minimum. I think Black is better than the kind of players you can get with only the minimum, and anything arguably better than him would cost more money (see Dedmon).
The 5-spot is a hard position to fill with a quality player. Just look at all of the great teams that play musical chairs at that position. Even the best teams in the league always seem to have a spot open at the 5. They scramble every off season to overpay guys like Zaza, and Bogut. Our 5-spot? 1) Capela (young rising star) 2) Nene (above average vet, good defender, limited floor-time) 3) Black (serviceable, above average defender, durable and high motor) This is a good thing. Nene cannot be relied on to play a full season. we needed another 5; and not just a big guy that takes up space. We needed another 5 that could play rotation minutes on a really good team. Black fits that role and for $3.5 we got real value there. We need as much front court defense and rebounding as we can get; and the guy is a warrior.
