a3 - There is a reason I phrased it the way I did. I expect Howard and Alston to be back and Alston will be 30 this July. I expect the Rockets to bring back DWes at a reasonable price because they have his Bird Rights. Bowen was 30 last November. That's 4 of 15. I don't see it going much higher especially since the LTax waivings were one summer only and we will likely keep both draft picks on the roster. Just an opinion but I really think the injuries hit Van Gundy hard and he will make some adjustments in how he fills out a roster. (In honesty, I haven't scoured the FA lists).
Understood, but there are some tough-minded veterans out there who could make good 7-8th men. Both our new starting SG & PF will be under 30. I don't even count Rybo for next year because he won't get off the bench. FWIW, I doubt Wesley will be back. He is just too old to be a rotation player on our team next year and I think playing scrub minutes every 2-3 games at the minimum salary is beneath him. If you exclude Rybo and cut Wesley, that gives us only 2 of 14 players over 30. I'm only concerned about our top 8-9 players. I bet we add a veteran backup at PG/SG/SF who is over 30. A Sura-like player with an attitude to help keep the ship steady. I hope the injuries hit JVG hard enough to knock him silly.
a3 - First, I make no pretenses at being an insider. But just on gut-level feel, I don't see Bobby Sura returning to the Rockets. The types of injuries/surgeries he is trying to recover from have brought down much younger athletes. I totally love what the guy puts on the court...and I'd love to be wrong...but I'm going to discount him for the short-term at a minimum. Secondly, I apologize for the information prior but it was posted from memory on a break at work. For 2006-07, the Rockets are over the cap and have ~$54.8m committed for 9 roster spots. This includes Tracy McGrady, Yao Ming, Juwan Howard, Stromile Swift, Rafer Alston, Dikembe Mutombo, Luther Head, Ryan Bowen (player option) & a Rookie Scale/#9 pick @ 1.7M. That's 9 contracts excluding Sura of which 4 are 30+ years of age. So we are in need of 6 contracts and that is diminished by the MLE and our 2nd round pick from the Knicks. We will likely disagree, but IMHO bringing back David Wesley using his Bird Rights is one less roster spot and means the Rockets are more likely to use a full MLE for 1 FA instead of splitting it for 2+. So to circle back to my original assessment, Howard, Alston, Bowen, Mutombo, and Wesley are very likely to be the only 5 players on the 2006-07 Rockets who exceed the age of 30. Let's look at the bright side of youth....the Magic have 10 players under the age of 26 and they are leading the Spurs at half-time tonight in SA. In spite of the fact that Duncan is halfway to a triple double with 22 points, 6 boards and 5 assists.
