If we could sign Chris Paul and keep Asik somehow. That pick n roll would be sick. If Parsons and Harden can set him up, imagine what CP3 could do for him. Asik fouls be a 15/12 guy easily. For half of what we'd be paying Dwight Howard. What I'm saying is CP3 would improve the players we already have. I don't think a center should get a max contract unless he is dominant in the post, can shoot, pass, and commands a double team. D12 ain't that guy.
Paul would make this a top 3 offense and a top 10 defense. Chris Paul is the 3rd best player in the NBA right now. He's a better player than James Harden. Let's be real here. He would improve our offense with his efficiency, taking the ball out of James Harden's hands and putting Harden in positions to score the durn ball without turning it over. That simple efficiency right there not only improves our offense but our defense also because there would be far less runouts on us. Not to mention Paul is a major defensive player. He's smarter than everybody else on the floor. He knows what the opponent is doing and he knows how to disrupt it. You put Chris Paul on this team along with a legit backup center that gives us great D when Asik is off the floor and this team probably becomes top 7 defensively.
Chris Paul, alone, would improve everyones efficiency. The biggest beneficiary to a CP3 signing would be Asik. Asik is great, but he wasn't built to play the run and gun style. Chris Paul would slow the game down and exploit all of our assets' strengths. CP3 ain't no joke. He's a culture changer, not a culture killer. It's funny how Blake Griffin and DeAndre wanted to run more, Chris Paul wanted to win. Word in clipperland was that he believed the young guys were more interested in getting highlights for Sportscenter and YouTube. Chris just wanted to win. You don't try not to land a Chris Paul. No ifs, ands, or buts
Having a CP3 + Harden tandem would be phenomenal. If you include Lin as their combo guard primary backup then that is arguably the best combination of guards you have on a single team, ever. I'm not saying that Lin is at their level - I'm just saying that he'd essentially be a starting-caliber guard playing heavy rotation minutes, so the drop-off would be much lower. And can you imagine if the team were able to throw out the three of them at the same time for those small ball minutes?
If we acquired CP3, Lin would not be here. We wouldn't pay Lin the rest of that backloaded contract when we have a more than capable backup in Patrick Beverley-- on a rookie pay scale
Gonna point you to Panda23's response. Lin's contract structure makes it harder to trade him and more desirable to keep him. We could argue about the relative merits of keeping Beverley vs. trading Lin, but I'm not nearly as sold on Beverley as everyone else seems to be based on a handful of playoff games. Unless you think he did a good job in Game 6? You need a capable backup for guys like Harden and CP3 so that you don't feel compelled to play them into the ground. Lin's salary is actually pretty reasonable, and he only projects to get better, so I think it makes sense to keep him even if someone like CP3 is acquired.
Chris Paul is not coming tO houston.....EVER...he would have no interest in playing next to harden....it wouldn't work Lin will be the PG in houston next year....and the guards are not the problem...the problem is down low....get a quality 4... Asik saw major improvement this year by the wat
Beverly is great I his roll of bringing energy off the bench...the reason Beverly pstarted in the playoffs is they realized they didn't have a solid 4
The Clippers were 4th in offense with much more talent than the Rockets, who were 6th. This is just ignorant talk.
Based on the numbers at HoopsHype it's possible that the Rockets have more flexibility than people realize. Basically, if you remove the salaries of Garcia, Delfino, and Ohlbrecht from 2013 and beyond, then the Rockets are on the hook for $45 million in 2013/14 and $42.7 million in 2014/15. Given the salary cap is, based on some estimates, probably going to go up to nearly $70 million in 2013/14, that leaves about $3 million of space, even if you sign a guy like CP3 for $23 million a year. The question becomes who you want to move in order to pick up a decent PF or depth C/F player. Lin and Asik are actually good deals, and the structure of their contracts make it hard to move them anyway, because no other team wants to eat that big backloaded year. The three biggest contracts after that are: T-Rob ($3.5 million, growing to $6 million in 2016/17) Aaron Brooks ($2.5 million in 2013/14) Royce White ($1.7 million, growing to $3.8 million in 2016/17) Everyone else is signed to $1.5 million or even less, making it kind of moot to move them unless we think we're getting a lot more value in return (or just to add that extra bit of cap space). Royce White is just blah and we'll dump him next year anyway so we just have to deal with his ridiculous salary for now. The interesting thing here is that T-Rob and Aaron Brooks combined actually make enough that we could potentially swap one or both of them and take in a more NBA-ready candidate in return. Carl Landry, for example, only makes $4 million in 2013/14, and that's the last year of his contract. If Les were willing to eat ~$5-8 million over the cap, then that would be enough to pick up someone like Nene, Kevin Love, etc. who make ~$15 million per year. And that would likely only be over the cap in the 2013/2014 year...
Do you have a source? I appreciate if you might be frustrated by people saying something that is wrong, but the only sources I could find (which I linked) say it's entirely possible the cap will move up to $70 million next year.
That's lovely, but won't someone still owe him $20M over the next 2 years if he is traded this year? Regardless of the cap hit, someone still has to write him a check. Cap is one thing, bottom line of the income statement is another. I'm not sure if the Rockets would have to pay part of that or the new team would have to pay all of it. His deal is structured to save us money on the front end, but who is dumb enough to let us keep the savings then dump the end of the contract on them? So once again, I think Lin with his contract would be hard to trade. Sigh.
