I've got an article coming out on the front page in a couple of days, but it's more about whether the Rockets want to maintain salary cap FLEXIBILITY for next summer. I suspect that Clutch and I may have a more comprehensive salary cap analysis out sometime in October, when the picture will be much clearer.
Solid assessments and analysis as usual. Good writeup, thanks for the foresight and after-sight. (Though we have too many self back-patters here already, dont become one of "them" )
Yep, this Bosh stuff was really just to entertain us and get Clutchfans hits up for a few weeks. The real interesting questions are: How is Yao's foot? How does NY do in 2010-2011 where does its ping pong ball land? We're talking about the potential salary cap situation without Yao and the possibility of rebuilding through a high draft pick.
Good deal Bima and i agree with alot of what u say. I was on deck with letting mcgrady expire if u could also dump battier's contract also which wouldve given the team eough for a max player. Having enough for a max guy put u in the room at least. This yr with so many teams having cap room, the rockets were never an option. All and all, it was a good move for if nothing else, i liked hill coming out.
Ultimately, the way this free agency played out tells me that even having max money wouldn't have put the Rockets in the room. I don't think it makes a lot of basketball sense, but it's clear now the top priorities for these free agents were 1) sexy locale and 2) being able to play with another top-tier free agent. Houston, while a great city, isn't 1, and we wouldn't have had room for two max guys. Agree with Bima that Morey definitely played his cards right, with regards to when to cash in on Tracy's contract.
I'll place this here since its pointless to have both threads up, but some interesting news that could effect FAgency for the Rockets and also Lebron. alanhahn Talked to an NBA team executive who confirmed something I heard: that the NBA salary cap will be higher than $56.1M projection
Actual numbers are.... STEIN_LINE_HQ Officially salary cap number is $58,044,000, up from $57.7 million last season. Tax line rises to $70.3 million, up from $69.9 million Could the Rox actually avoid the LT now?
I think, and he can explain this in much greater detail, that if we would have let TMAC's contract expire then for us to have acquired anything this offseason we would have had to let Scola, Lowry and Hayes go and use the 7-9 million in capspace to acquire FAgents. Now we can keep those guys plus KMartin, JHill and JJ plus still acquiring talent using the MLE which is about 5.8 million per year.
I think its due to Lowry and Scola having cap holds. Due to those cap holds we would have had virtually no cap room even with Tmac's contract expiring. So in order to not make Tmac's expirings a wasted asset we would have had to renounce our rights to Scola and Lowry, which probably would have driven their market value sky high.
Yeah I do not agree with that one either. The Rockets have bird rights on all three players as well as Scola and Lowry being restricted. I certainly don't think the Rockets would just let them walk.
Maybe. The Rockets have 13 guys under contract at a total of $62 mil. So, they got about $8 mil to the tax threshold. One can safely assume Scola + Lowry will cost more than $8 mil to sign. However, they got options to get under the tax threshhold if needed. For example, they can pay somebody to take the remaining less than 1/2 year salary of Andersen or Jeffries off of their hands at the trade deadline. May have to give some consideration to do it, but salary dumping cost should be cheaper than before because several teams should be under the cap or have Trade Exceptiosn to eat salary.
That is interesting, they spoke about paying the Lux tax this year, no matter what, but their history has been to avoid it at all costs. They will probably look to get under it at some point this season. It is smart business. DD
