Salary matching is only required when you are over the soft cap. We can absorb contracts be that in trade or free agency up to the soft cap. After that, in trade you have to match within 125% +/- $100k OR in the case of free agents, use salary cap exceptions like the MLE & BAE. Cap space is just that, use it how you want. The Rockets will have ~$72.6m in practical cap space this offseason.
To clarify for the benefit of you and @kjayp understanding - we have $62million in dead cap on our balance sheet this year(mostly from waiving John Wall and Derrick Favors) so even though we have very few expensive active contracts(really just Gordon's), we are still required to operate as an over the cap team because we have $137mil in cap allocations. That means any trade of Gordon would require us to match and frankly that's why Gordon isn't already gone. Check out SpoTrac's page for the Rockets to see what I'm talking about.
The Rockets are having an identity crisis This team’s personnel doesn’t match its philosophy. The Rockets have a pick-and-spread coach with a motion roster. So the Rockets have a coach and a lead ball-handler who want to play one way, and a whole host of players who’d benefit from playing another way. https://www.thedreamshake.com/platf...is-jalen-green-alperen-sengun-kevin-porter-jr
I'm not sure it would help Gordon "be gone" if we were under the cap currently. Wouldn't it be about the destination he is heading to? Given that almost every team is over the cap almost every year, it is a difficult proposition to just send a player somewhere (I think Indiana and San Antonio could absorb him right now if they wanted). I'd suggest EGo being here still isn't at all related to our being over the cap.
More like $57-60m (I might be wrong on this!) My understanding is that unsigned draft picks have a cap hold equivalent to 120% of their rookie scale contract. We have two first rounders, so if we got lucky and got pick 1, it would be 9,983,300 for the rookie scale, and pick 25 is 2,154,200. Obviously we will fall on a scale in there somewhere. Pick 2 gets a mill a season less than pick 1, while the change in later first round salaries is nowhere near as drastic. So taking 1 and 25 gives us about as "bad" a situation (salary wise) as possible (and an amazing outcome in real life). That would amount to 14,565,000. Add that to the 9 guaranteed contracts totalling 58,414,480, and the 1x incomplete roster charge (for arguments sake, let's assume we don't have an incomplete roster charge, and instead picked up the option on KJ Martin instead) and we get 74,910,161 (or close enough to) With a cap of 134 mill projected, it leaves us with a tad over 59mill in cap space. That still allows us to sign a max FA (who?! We could simply absorb a max player into our cap if a team wanted to move on from them and go a different direction, and perhaps send back a talented young player in return), a significant other contract (15ish mill range - again a trade with non-matching salaries or no outgoing on our part works here), exceed the cap by signing a minimum contract player to take the roster to 15 spots (could be NG?). Then we have the use of the MLE ($11.36 mill) AND have the BAE ($ 4.48 mill). There's some decent artillery there for Stone to upgrade the roster. But also a good reason not to be taking back ongoing salary in any Gordon trade. There is no sense compromising that cap room
Its more about the destination teams cap situation than it is the Rockets. Those teams have to send out about $15.5m for matching purposes if they are over the cap and just about any team that might be interested is over the cap. Problem is, that matching figure is between the max and the MLE and there's very few players who fall in that range making a one for one trade near impossible. Now they could send him to an under the cap team but what's the point, it probably costs you an asset to do it and is just a dollar savings for Tilman, they are better off buying him out and waiving him. I think we both understand this, just making the statement to clarify for others. Your math looks about right, I just posted the raw number from Spotrac prior to the draft pick signings .... which is ultimately inaccurate.
Yeah - it is the annoying thing about Spotrac - they do just about every other eventuality, except the draft picks (I suppose because there has been no lottery conducted yet, so they don't want to deal with 'what if' - but it does give a somewhat unhelpful view of how much cap space a team might have available)
this is where i got caught in the switches - lol! so basically, we really dont have the contracts to pull off a major trade deadline deal this year - at leastwise not for say a high dollar max player... wo having to include green or jabari in the poopoo platter... for salary matching... ego, tate, kmj combo could bring back a lil under 30M... BUT in the OFFSEASON (once the dead money comes off the books)... THEN we could trade a bunch of draft picks for a disgruntled wo any contract matching... bc were so far under... THANKS for the clarification!
Just get him out of here, I don't care where he ends up, just want him gone. Girl don't go away mad, just go away.