49.5 Million Cap - Rockets Status

The Rockets payroll for this year is $55,354,005 and thats before signing Luther Head. Basically theres nothing the rox can offer FA's besides LLE(1.8 mil) or work out a sign and trade.

 

That's also without the Swift signing. The Luxury Tax kicks in at $61.7 million. With Stro adding about 5 mill in salary, and Head making about 900K, that would put us right at the Luxury Tax. Bowen is making the minimum which would also be about 900k. Someone of the boards keeps mentioning that since Bowen is making the minimum that he wouldn't count towards the Tax. I don't think that's true, he wouldn't count towards the cap, but the tax is dollar for dollar for any amount over the LT threshold.

And we still got to deal with Barry and Deke who most of us would prefer to keep if we don't acquire upgrades. My guess on how everything will shake down is, we sign Barry to about $2 mill, Deke to about $2 mill. Use the LLE for a guy like Spree, Finley, or Buckner. Then we amnesty cut either Baker or Moochie. That would put us about 2 mill over the LT. Which wouldn't be so bad.

We would be able to clear all the LT by amnesty cutting Spoon, but I'd rather keep his expiring contract in case we need it to do a deal.

 

Don't your own free agents count against your cap until they are signed with another team or you renounce their right? I believe that cap number already includes Deke and JB. Once they resign, the cap is readjusted to the new salary. Am I wrong?

 

More or less, yes.

Our free agents count against our cap in that we can't use cap space. But, we're over the cap anyway. The $55+ mill alex cited only includes signed players. We're over the cap either way, so in a sense, sure if you want to look at our "cap figure" as over $70 million before resigning Deke/Barry you can, but it just doesn't make sense to do so.

m_cable - You really think there's a deal out that we'd need Spoon vs. Baker or Moochie for? Put it this way- in the right market, for that couple mill you save by cutting Spoon instead you could probably buy a late first rounder or a 2nd rounder or two.

 

Nike,
I put us at about $70 mil with our current roster and planned signings (Head, Swift, Dke, Barry and Bowen). It is becoming more and more apparent that Les will likely cut Spoon as he is our largest expiring contract. It will not get us under the LT threshhold, but pretty close. Les will have to fork over about $1.5 mil in LT unless we can work at trade for cap space (trade exemption) that we do not exercise.


Even if we do nothing and let all our contracts expire next year we will be over the current salary cap with a max contract for Yao in place. I can see us flurting with the LT for the forseeable future.

 

Well that's why I'm saying "just in case." Personally I'd rather keep all of our expiring contracts, just in case something comes along. But I'll conceed that Les isn't going to want to carry 4 extra million on the off-chance that we absolutely need it.

I say it's better to be safe than sorry. That extra millions to buy a draft pick is on the business side of things. That money can be made and used from anywhere. But assets as they apply to the contraints of the salary cap are fixed. We can only have x amount of cap space or we can only have so many expiring contracts.

Mark Cuban used the philosophy to take advantage of all the assets that he has available under the CBA and damn all of the outside costs. Now that line of thinking hasn't led him to an NBA title, but with Yao and Mcgrady I really feel that Les has the right foundation in place to make it work even if he runs this philosophy on a smaller scale.

This team is really close, and I think an extra 2 million in an expiring contract could be the difference in any number of deals. On the chance that it leads to a deal that shores up our championship run, then I think it's worth the extra cash. I mean it's barely more than we were paying Charlie Ward last year.

 

Are you planning on giving 4 mill apiece to Mutombo and Barry?

Swift will make right at 5 mill. Even if you generously give Bowen and Head 900K apiece, that's 6.8 mill between the 3 of them to go on top of the 55.35 mill for the rest of the roster. That's 62.15 million for a roster of:

Yao/Baker
Swift/Howard/Spoon
TMac/Bowen
Wesley/Head
Sura/James/Norris/Ward

There's 2 roster spots left - 3 assuming we make an amnesty cut. Mutombo and Barry are not going to be making 8 mill between them. Even if you add a Nick Van Exel type for the 1.7 mill LLE, I still doubt Mutombo and Barry making 6 mill between them. We're not going to break the 70 mill level.

 

How is this. It puts us right at 70M

http://www.geocities.com/micah1j/

 

Very nice work!

I cringe when i see T-mac making 20 million dollars. It makes me wish we had the NFL cap system in effect where you can renogotiate contracts with your guys. He seems like the kind of guy that would give up a few million to lure a player of his choice here.

How did the NFL ever get that Salary cap in effect? That would never fly in the NBA and especially the MLB.

 

Nice work Micah. You know, it is becoming increasingly evident that there are going to be more teams either paying the luxury tax or they are going to be giving NBDL'rs and other foreigners and minor league type players the opportunity to make it in the NBA by giving them minimum contracts instead of signing more FA's with the MLE. This could possibly hurt us with Deke and JB. You are wanting to give Deke $6 mill over 2 years, which in my opinion represents pretty good value for us. But, giving him that money and giving JB his contract does cause us LT dollars. I can see CD and Les maybe going with somebody like Malick at the minimum instead of Deke just to save the $$$. I sure hope not. But I think it is obvious that CD is looking for low budget upgrades right now. Even with our expirings being gone next year we are only about $4 million away from luxury tax before we even fill out our roster. Even if we fill out the final 5 slots or so with minimum salary guys, we are going to be pushing the lux tax. What it basically means is if we make a trade with our expirings for longer term contracts we are basically gonna pay double for that contract we take back..........unless we deal a long term contract away with it.

Just another reason that Sura and Howard are probably on the trade block along with our expirings. I would bet this is what held up a deal with Portland for Stoudamire. We couldn't get them to take back Howard. They would have probably done a deal shedding one of their other contracts for straight expirings. But we didn't want to take back so much salary.

CD's big moves in July may have come down to STROMILE.....and that's all folx.....save some LLE player.

 

The easiest way to save Lux Tax now is to not use the LLE and/or do a trade were we take back 1-2M less in salary.

IIRC, minimum contracts do NOT count toward the Luxury Tax.

 

I cringe when I see Finley, Houston, Webber and Marbury making 20mill/year not T-Mac. T-Mac gets paid less than Shaq, Duncan, Garnett, Webber, Marbury, Iverson, Kidd, Jermaine O'Neal, Bryant and very close to Finley, Houston, Grant Hill, Jalen Rose. He generates more revenue than any other player on that list except for perhaps Shaq. Les looks at T-Mac as an investment not a burden. He's well worth it

 

Thanks. T-Mac will only be 31 that season so he still should be wirth it (IE not way overpaid).

 

What's a couple of million dollars in luxury taxes for a multimillionare owner? We were asking Swift and Stoudemire (who are relatively poor compared to billionaire NBA owners) to leave 10million dollars+ on the table to come to a winning situation, but we can't ask our owner to spend a couple of extra million dollars to put a championship caliber team on the floor? If an additional player could be a difference maker, $2million in luxury tax is pocket change and it should be spent.

 

I think our owner will spend it when he is confident that the move will put us over the top. That kind of move is likely to come midseason when we know where we stand, where the other teams stand, and what the actual trade would be. I do not feel like Les is cheap. He's just smart.

 

Smart means a little conservative to me. If Les is smart, then I'd rather have a dumb owner like Dolan or Cuban or Mr. Microsoft Paul Allen

 

So you would like an owner like Paul Allen who is running the NBA's version of the Cell Block C team and has every over priced player on the market?

Or should we go back to being like Cuban who has spent more money than any owner in the league only to get no where? We are getting just as far if not farther recently than Dallas is in a shorter amount of time with a lot less money spent. Or we could spend 18 million or something on Dampier like players.

Les is doing a good job and having CD and JVG running the show and brining in players that fit the system is working to our advantage.

If you don't think so look at each year JVG has been with the team...we are getting better and better each year. We aren't going downhill we keep inproving.

Then compare that to Dallas or Portland...they had a lot...now they are slowly loosing everything piece by piece.

 

Or Orlando's owner who hired Weis*ss.

 

I have this bridge for sale. Could I make an appointment for my people to get in touch with your people pursuant to selling you this bridge. Please!!!