First of all, the Rockets never signed Gasol to an offer sheet. There was just discussion of possibly doing so. Morey was never ACTUALLY going to sign him to an offer sheet, since Memphis was just going to match. And, in case I didn't sufficiently answer your question before, I'll reiterate. If the Rockets had actually signed Gasol, Memphis would have just matched and then tried like hell to mend any hard feelings with Marc. (And in the Rudy F. scenario, Portland never let him walk. They ended up trading him for a first round pick, which they immediately flipped to Denver in the trade to acquire Raymond Felton. How is that "letting him go"?) This is all moot, however, as even under the hypothetical where the Rockets get Pau, they wanted to pair him with Nene, not Marc. Sorry you two disagree that Memphis management would be a bunch of nice guys and let him go for little/nothing. It's your right to disagree. Let's just move on, shall we?
First, Gasol does not want to come to houston and he is not an impacted player as you think, he is old and has a huge contract. Second, Nene resigned with Denver and Denver wanted to keep him. Even that trade was not blocked by NBA, this team with Gasol will still have long way to win a playoff spot. If the lineup is what you posted, there will be still issue of coach and system. How would those players fit with the system and will it work? Be real.
Let's look at the case of 4 RFAs in recent history: Kenyon Martin, Joe Johnson, Elton Brand, Marcin Gortat. Kenyon got a fat contract with the Nuggets based on Prime-Kidd spoon-feeding him dunks and easy looks, and the fact that the Nets made the finals in back to back years. The Nets didn't want to to pay him a max contract, but still threatened the Nuggets with matching so that they were able to extract 3 first rounders in a S&T. Joe Johnson publicly told Phoenix that he wanted to leave, and was threatening to sign an offer sheet with Atlanta for max dollars. Despite this, Phoenix was still able to extract 2 first rounders and Boris Diaw in a S&T. Elton Brand signed a max offer sheet with Miami, expecting to be let go by the Clippers, since the largest contract that Sterling had ever agreed to prior to that was the kings ransom of $15M for Eric Piatkowski. Instead, he was matched, and had to wait 5 more years until he could get the Clippers back by reneging on another max deal and sticking them with Baron Davis. Marcin Gortat made it very clear that he wanted more minutes that the dozen or so he was getting as Dwight Howard's backup. He signed an offer sheet at the full mid-level with Dallas, and was "very disappointed" when Orlando matched. The RFA does have some leverage, but when you sign the offer sheet, you're all but gift wrapping him back to the other team. Outside of benchwarmers below the midlevel, or extremely rare circumstances (such as in 2003, when the Clippers had 4 (!) free agents signing sheets that offseason, where the smallest was Corey Maggette at 5/$49M. If you want to get out of Dodge, you've got to work with both teams to get a S&T; and the price is definitely not going to be cheap for your receiving team.
The truth behind signing Nene ? The truth was that Morey was trying to get Nene, just like what he did before for Bosh, etc, but this time, a chance to get Nene is bit of high, still, likely Nene would return his current team with a long contract.
I prefer whiskey - Woodford Reserve these days on the rox....yep...on the ROX.....I am a true ROX fan ! DD
