Tillman, how are you....

I’ve always felt that when plenty of people were going with Ferntits and Tilfart, etc, it was counterproductive to police the use of ‘Tillman’, but feel free to keep fighting the good fight.

As far as the OP’s question about how will Tilman pay all these guys - the answer is that he won’t. Best case, he’ll pay some and make smart trades with the rest to get value back. Worst case, he’ll trade all of them away in salary avoiding moves and take back picks to push off the whole ‘contending’ thing another player development cycle.

 

Yeah - the pain isn't going to be in those first few contracts - the value of young superstars on max contracts is through the roof. Trae Young is getting $28mil to start with his first big contract year - figure we may have one or two guys making similar money in the next 3-4 years - assuming Green doesn't pull the Luka "All NBA Team in 2 years of his rookie contract" situation that gifted him a rare supermax for a young player. I don't think all of these players will pan out to be superstars(this IS only Summer League) and a few of them will have to get the tough lesson of being a RFA before they get their first big contract but realistically I think mostly all these young guys will get paid well enough in the short term - we should have a runway of 4-6 years of being able to pay everyone without great sacrifices on account of the way our cap sheet essentially clears up in 2 years before the young guys are getting paid.

The big problem will be when those guys are up for their next contracts and THEN there will have to be compromises made to decide how far into the salary cap we are willing to be over and what we are going to do with our young guys who will inevitably have to leave to get paid their market worth. Wall and EGO will be long gone by then and I suspect Wood's timetable means he will be traded at some point to make cap room for our young guys acquired through the draft(next year's draft is deep for big men for example and Sengun has starter potential already). It would be interesting if in this rebuild Stone can manage to be aggressive shopping young drafted talent for future picks and keep a pipeline of valuable cost controlled guys on rookie/first contract deals. In terms of having a blank slate to work with - Stone really does have more options than most GMs who have to make sacrifices in terms of contracts that don't quite line up the way you hope unless 3-4 guys from this draft turn into legit players in which case - good problem to have in terms of picking and choosing.

 

With the pace of inflation, surf and turf will be $60 and tickets will be starting at $75. All you have to do is own assets to weather the inflation storm.

 

THIS! Worried about 3 years out and havent even played a real NBA game yet.

 

Worth noting this is about the most clutchfan thread of all time.

....reading through the comments and people are simultaneously beating up on Fertitta while acknowledging how awesome the team looks, while also being completely unrealistic about how we are watching SUMMER LEAGUE results and anticipating all the headaches our cap will look like after we are on our 2nd championship 3 years from now and all these stars are looking for max contracts. You couldn't encapsulate the state of this board in late 2021 better than what you see in this thread right now.

Bravo gentlemen....now let's go get that Summer League title to sit on the shelf next to the Larry O'Brien Trophy being delivered in a few years.

 

Dan Langhi was a Titan of the summer league, too. It happens. I’m not too worried about our top 3 guys. One of them could bust, but I like their chances to translate.

 

The issue is we should also have top 5 picks in the next two years.

Sadly KPJ might be trade bait for some good cost controlled role players.

 

Lol, KPj went from focal point of the rebuilding effort to trade bait in one offseason.

 

They also had Ibaka. I believe he got the max from them.

JG shouldn’t need t leave anything on the table. The decision they will need to make is whether they want to sign another free agent in with their cap space in 2023 before re-signing Wood, or if they want to keep Wood at all. They will have to start laying all of the groundwork now for 2023 and 2024 free agency.

 

This is actually a good discussion.

If Green projects out to be a superstar and supermax player, you can't be handing out max deals to fake max players like Wood and KPJ.

Something is going to have to give.

 

Yep. If we keep all these players, and they all believe themselves max-worthy...? Wood is not. KPJ probably isn't....at least, not yet. Among four rookies, we will have some large contracts handed out when the time comes.

We do see what happens when teams hand out max contracts because they're afraid of losing a player ("we can always trade him later"; "we'll make sure he grows into earning that contract").

 

Whatever it takes keep this young core together PERIOD!

 

Green and Sengun, if their play holds up during the season, are musts. I'm really interested in Christopher as a third guard with KPJ and Green. Speaking of KPJ, if he is the 20/6/6 guy that I think he will be then he is another guy that is going to get paid and it should be by the Rockets. I think Wood might end up being sacrificed in order to make sure that the Rockets maintain the flexibility to sign their younger guys. My hope is that the 2022 draft brings another foundational piece and another solid role player. KPJ-Green-Sengun-'22 pick should be the core that takes up most of the cap with the remainder going to the role players supporting those guys.

 

You really need to focus on players who exceed the max level. I think they will ultimately have to trade Wood ahead of his free agency just to make sure he isn’t absorbing cap space that could be used on one of those players that exceeds the max… true superstars. They should operate for now that Green is someone they will put in that category.

 

KPJ will be a better basketball than Jalen Green

He bounced from the gleague and back and forth between starting and bench and still averaged 16/6

He also dropped 50/11 on Jrue Holidays head

KPJ/Green/Sengun will be our big 3 dynasty

 

Because KPJ’s current contract is very pretty small, won’t his next one be limited in how large it can be? What is the max he can make?

 

Hopefully this with 2022 lottery pick surrounded by Tate, Martin, Christopher and Garuba as role players.