As many of you know there is a salary cap and the rockets wil have a lot of money to play with this offseason what some of y’all may not know is that there is a FLOOR . Which I think is about 90 percent of the cap simply put , the rockets are gonna HAVE to pay people . If we add no one then the $ up to the floor gets distributed to the players on the roster . just keep that in mind when saying “this is too much money for this guy “ etc … either we pay a vet to come here or we end up tacking extra money onto the salary of guys we have . There’s also a tension between bringing in vets and guaranteeing playing time to youngsters. we’ve gotten ourselves into a tricky spot and we need a lot of growth .
So our guys are praying they sign nobody else? The trick will be keeping the deals at 2 years with a 3rd year team option to keep maximum flexibility for when we’re actually good
When do we have to hit the salary floor? By opening day? At some point during the season? By the end of the season? We don't have to spend just cuz. We could be a dumping ground for a disgruntled player at some point this season.
Good luck with this thread. Half the people here think it's still 2007 and paying $20m for a non all star player is a franchise killing move.
I don't understand why people are so alarmed by this. No one has ever had a problem meeting that salary floor, even with little to no time left till the deadline. At worst you call some teams up and absorb an expiring contract or two, they would be happy to do it and if we're desperate they can probably get it done for a couple of second round picks. This salary floor thing seems to me like an excuse to waste money early in the FA window. Just get value players. Stop slicing up the cap space like a pie and insisting you spend every dime. Stop panicking about who we'll get and when we'll get them. Just sign people to short or value deals - there is nothing else. Look at every deal and make sure it's good every year. In that way even if we stockpile a bunch of $15m/season players, we will be able to consolidate them into better assets plus we can attach picks to get a great player. The better way to look at it is: we are on our way to a title, the only way we can f*ck that up is risky signings or trades gone bad. If we do nothing but use our future draft picks and develop our 8 young players, we will have an amazing team when they're all between 23 and 26. That's just a few years away. All we're trying to do is raise that ceiling and shorten that time. All trades and signings have some risk, so you have to leave some room for error even when trying to avoid risk. The idea that we're so far from a title and we need to take major risks in FA and draft to alter that is alarmist and not rooted in reality. We have 8 promising young players, $60m in cap space, a #4 pick and several future picks. Relax. I know the tanking has been hard, but this is not panic time. This is the start of the game. We were literally playing without accountability for wins. Even Silas could coach this team better next season if his paycheck depended on wins and the organization actually acquired veteran depth for him. Yes even Silas. Just play it safe and build intelligently. No one ever remembered if a contender took 4 years or 5 years to build. One year is nothing given what we've been through and the 5+ year contention window we're trying to build. I find that a lot of people are terrified by the prospect of missing the playoffs next season when it's not that big a deal. That they compete for the playoffs and are in the top 10 teams in the West would be a massive first step. This team with the additions of Udoka, #4 pick and 3 cheap signings (say Nerlens Noel, Dennis Schroeder, Justin Holiday) would win 30+ games assuming 4 of our 8 young players improve and only one of them takes a major step. If you do nothing but keep that team together another season, with the internal improvement alone we'll be in the playoffs and you'll have spent maybe $20m/season total on the 3 vets you brought in. All we're trying to do is shorten the time it takes to make the playoffs by one season. If we need to make the salary floor, we'll just absorb a PG and/or C from teams that want to shed 1-2 year contracts.
Worth noting that the salary floor thing isn't as significant as it seems. If a team doesn't spend the floor, then the difference just gets split between the existing players on the roster at the floor deadline. So if we have 60M in space, and don't spend a dime. If we have 15 guys on the roster, it simply means that every player on the roster gets a 4M bonus. Basically there is no penalty
Nope, this has changed with the new CBA. Effectively, you have to hit the salary floor by the first day of the regular season. This has also changed with the new CBA, there is now a real and major penalty to not hitting the salary floor - you don’t get any of the luxury tax distribution from tax teams. That would have been a penalty of $15 million last season. Tilman isn’t allowing us to miss out on that tax distiribution.
Apologies. I didn't realise that. However, essentially that is still no significant penalty to the team. It is only a penalty to the owners pockets. I agree that there is no way Tilly would permit such a thing
