...also worth noting - it appears most GMs aren't handing out incentive laden deals anymore because they don't offer any value to the teams. In the new CBA those incentives count towards a team's cap space regardless of whether the player meets the incentives or not - that means even if in this hypothetical $100mil Tari deal - Tari was offered $15mil in incentives over x years, those $15mil in incentives would still count against the team's cap sheet and prevent Houston from making further roster moves even if they were unrealistic targets like Tari winning an MVP. I think incentives were a tool used to mitigate risk for young players with developmental concerns or injury histories - Tari fits into both camps. Now Tari is sitting on the qualifying offer like other young players with similar concerns. This isn't a Tari/Houston problem so much as a problem with the new CBA eliminating risk mitigation for players who fall into that camp. All he can do is ball out this year(last night was NOT a good start for him) and try to find a handful of teams willing to compete for his services this offseason...but the reality is there aren't a lot of teams with budget to do that so his options are likely limited.
I think Tari played one of the worst games of basketball I've ever seen yesterday. Truly. Couldn't believe it.
This seems like a fabrication. No way Stone offered 100 mill in any capacity. Would've been 4/100 or 5/100 and youre not giving 5/100 to an injury prone player. 2+1 team option at 55 mill seemed abt right to me.
We have the KPJ extension as a clear model of how just reporting a $100M total contract value without revealing the guarantees is pretty much useless. KPJ signed a 4-year, $82.5M deal, but only received $15.6M of it due to the guarantee structure. That was definitely an extreme case, but I would suspect that one sticking point for Tari was going to be how much the Rockets pushed for Exhibit 3 prior injury exclusion protection on his leg. If he's definitely going to have to manage chronic soreness for the rest of his career, you absolutely would refuse to sign a deal where the team is going to be incentivized to trump up the severity of an injury so they can cut you with no financial commitment. If he's on a fully guaranteed deal, the team is going to be strongly incentivized to keep any injury under wraps as best they can, work with you to rehab, and possibly find a future trade suitor who is more permissible on the medicals. If Tari eventually got cut with an injury designation, he'd be hit by the double whammy of getting waived with no guaranteed money, and also carrying that tag while looking for a new spot. He'd likely never be able to sign another deal with significant guaranteed money, and would likely be bouncing from team to team on short term deals. This seems pretty bush league for the Rockets to leak this offer, as they know how it will be picked up by content aggregators, and how misleading it is without further details. Really poisons the well and hurts the relationship with the player, and I just don't see any upside in it for the team in future negotiations.
It was like he got his talent stolen like in that movie Space Jam, but instead of the monstars stealing his talent, Cam Whitmore jumped inside Tari's body so he could still be a Rocket but actually play in a game alongside KD.
Why do you automatically blame the Rockets for leaking this offer when Windhorst doesn't say who his source is and whether he knows any other details? Tari's camp could have leaked the offer and Windhorst just left out the details because the Twitter audience doesn't care about that stuff. Windhorst might clarify in the future that the offer was incredibly team friendly. Even the example you referenced earlier with KPJ's extension demonstrates this. Woj listed $82.5M in his tweet. The source wasn't the Rockets, it was KPJ's agent and Woj left out all the details about the partial guarantee structure.
