When trading away one bad Mo Taylor contract for the two bad Norris and Baker contracts, Dawson said that it was much easier to deal with the two smaller contracts. Anotehr CD quote that I don't know where to post was that the Rockets did not like to dip into the restricted free agent market. If you make a fair, or below market bid, the previous team will pretty much always match. By definition, you have to overpay to get a RFA.
Though my comment is about a page behind timely relevance, eh, I just read this and I'll make it anyway: I will start to worry about the Rockets' lux tax status when the team goes public and I own shares. When I have a personal stake in the Rockets' expenditures, I'll keep an eye on our payroll. Until then, my only interest in payroll is making sure that the Rockets have the best talent on the floor given the CBA salary restrictions; my only investment is emotional. The theoretically perfect owner is the one that hires great execs (Thorn, West, etc.) and just sits back with their wallet open forever. It just gets on my nerves that somehow the culture of big business pro basketball has made fans concerned about their team's owners' wallet. When NBA tickets cost $10, I'll have plenty of sympathy for Les' financial concerns. Until then, ain't my money; ain't my problem—spend, spend, spend.
I agree with the sentiment. I won't mind one bit if Les carries a $100 million payroll to field us a good team. However, knowing that he won't tolerate being in luxury-tax land, and knowing that he'll sacrifice talent (see: Posey) to stay out of it, it forces me to be more circumspect about who I want him to sign. Knowing that a move now that would be of some help immediately would force us into a costly cut 3 years from now makes me more hesitant to endorse it. So, to get the present example of the expiring contracts. Using all $21 million in trade certainly won't happen because it'll land us well into lux tax territory. We might be able to safely do $5 million. Now, will we be better off taking a player in trade another team is trying to dump, or just use the MLE on a free agent? If the right player is available now, we'll make the trade, but chances are we're better off with a free agent since most guys on the trading block are overpriced. I almost prefer to watch the Rockets miss out now on the contract expiration deals than take a trade now and not use the MLE a year from now.
macfan is not making any sense, but the funny thing is that I have seen that a few times now, and he always speaks like he is the authority on things when he, unlike people like, e.g., aelliott or NIKEstrad, really apparently has no idea. Why then talk like you know everything first? At least this time he acknowledged his (obvious) error. micah1j, just wanted to say that http://www.geocities.com/micah1j/ is really awesome to get a better understanding of our present and future cap and luxury tax situation. Thanks!
Exactly. Les will not go hog wild into LT land no matter how much we wish. So unless you're putting together a fantasy team, you might as well factor in the realities of the business when thinking of trade scenarios, etc.
So, how many people have you been able to convince that they should open up their wallets forever for your benefit?
If people think that an owner that does not care about his teams' payroll is a good owner just loook at New York and Dallas. And before you bring up Mark Cuban, I think it deserves mentioning that Finley, Nowitzki, and Steve Nash were all on the Mavs before Cuban owned the team. I think the Mavs would have been a pretty good team without signing guys like Raef LaFrentz and Shawn Bradley to rediculously large deals.
Thanks Sir Jackie Chiles & apostolic3. I've put the link in my sig and will keep updating it when new info is known.
