Chronicle: nice rundown on the Rocket's off season plans.

THe thing about Morey is that any sentimentality involved in signing or re-signing anymore will have to make sense in the number crunching department (salary matters/machine-stats, etc.), plus overall team chemistry and needs. I think Morey has had a good handle on this so far. He couldn't have known that BOTH Deke and Yao would go down, plus Tmac.

 

I thought this part would cause more buzz around here:

"The Rockets do not have a draft pick (after the Artest and Steve Francis deals) and are over the cap, giving them only the mid-level exception to spend on free agents. They do hope to buy a draft pick for the fourth consecutive year and also seem more willing to spend in free agency, even if keeping Artest and using all the mid-level exception pushes them past the luxury-tax threshold.

Economic advantage?
More likely, the Rockets will look for the sort of unexpected deals they made to acquire Artest and Luis Scola in the previous offseasons. More teams are expected to seek cost-cutting, rather than roster-improving, trades.

“I am hopeful we can take advantage of the economy like that,” Morey said. “We are well-positioned with a franchise well supported by the Houston community and an owner (Les Alexander) willing to spend to take advantage of the economic downturn.”

 

with yao perceived as not possibly not having too many years left, and assuming we're in the "win now" mode, les needs to up his ante and do it in an all-in fashion and make some big moves, even if it requires exceeding the lux tax line. organic growth and some tweaks here and there won't cut it imo.

don't be fooled by our success this post-season. our ideal scenario will be a healthy and motivated mcgrady coming back - together with a healthy and more hungry yao who improves his games this summer. but how likely is that gonna happen? i don't know the answer. but if that is not happening, we need to do something more significant than just re-signing the players we had this past season - and even that, is assuming yao would come back healthy for at least one more year.

so, those moves in the chron article do not make a lot sense to me.

 

You know that's not coming from the Rockets, right? That may very well be their plan, but it's not like Morey is coming out and saying "We're not going to overpay Artest" or "We will definitely sign another big man" or "We're going to acquire players from teams looking to dump salaries". This is just Feigen's opinion of what we should be doing which is pretty much what everybody elses opinion is too. Just don't think that this is some blueprint that the Rockets handed out to the media. For all we know, the Rockets could overpay Ron, part with Von, decide to keep TMAC, and decide that there's no big man worthy of the MLE.

 

This has me thrilled. And I know there has been a lot of discussion about how Tracy McGrady is unlikely to be traded - but I can't help but think that a 23 million dollar expiring contract will be VERY appealing to some teams.

 

Who said that? Yao is injury prone. His injuries ARE NOT degenerative, and he is young.

That is Carrol Dawson talk right there.

 

As much as I believe we'd like to, I just don't see us getting rid of TMac until right at the trade deadline. All we can get for him now is either garbage or bad contract(s).

Trading a player making 23 mil. isn't easy in ideal circumstances, but I can't imagine a team taking on that kind of salary dump in 2010 before the season starts and then telling their fans "we're rolling the dice on this guy".

I think every Rockets fan has to be praying TMac is working his butt off now, is seeing a shrink and comes back strong.

 

good one.

im somewhat confused as to why we keep drafting and picking up talent when we have a few draft picks overseas and a few that still need development on our team, though.

 

i think we need one player who has the ability to shoot and drive, similar to von wafer, but with more efficient scoring. t-mac is incredibly inefficient.

i would love a guy like michael pietrus i think he can play SG.

 

Well, this year's playoff run is a good reason why. We beat LA in 2 games without our all star players.

Gathering talent also gives you more trade options.

 

...I understand the win now argument but I also feel like we are in a position to drastically change the roster inside of two years. If we were going to go in another direction, Morey could completely change the look of us in a couple of years and I still think we would be competitive. Look at the roster right now:

Free agents:
Artest
Wafer
Mutumbo(retiring obviously)
Brian Cook(thank goodness-this guy is awful)

Entering last year of deal:
Tmac
Barry
Brooks
Hayes
Landry
Lowry
Scola
Flight White

Have two years remaining on contract:
Yao
Battier
Dorsey

Trade Exceptions - not sure when they expire but I know we have roughly $4mil from the Alston & Francis trades.

I'm not saying the Rockets will, but I'm saying they have the ability to put pretty much any package of players together if they want to get in the trade market. No one has a particularly bad contract except Tmac's expiring deal and everyone has a relatively short deal which can be good or bad. Obviously you like to lock up talent long term but considering all of those contracts were signed before the economic downturn(and decrease in salary cap), the chances of resigning those players at more affordable contracts is higher since economical realities force it but of course you run the risk of someone with more cap space(relatively few players right now) swooping in and stealing a player by paying more.

I think this is the summer where they have to decide where to go with this team - no more "let's wait an see". This is about going "all out with Yao and whatever talent we put around him" or "let's take our pieces and reshape this team" mode. I think Morey would be wise to play the trade market this summer and just see what's available. You have to like this team the way it's constructed when healthy but you never know what other people are willing to offer and that's why you dangle all the expiring deals in front of teams. I think the Rockets will find they can score some decent talent via trade but the biggest challenge will be how bad the contracts are they have to take back to get it. Nearly every team has at least a couple of contracts signed before the economic downturn that no longer represents true market value for the player and you better believe teams are looking to shed themselves of those contracts. If the Rockets don't make a trade, I suspect it will be for that reason.

 

good point, i just thought of the donte green trade lol

i was more thinking in terms of impact to the team on the court, since none of the players that we used against LA were rookies and so i was wondering why we don't just develop a few guys we already got (i.e. dorsey and leunen) first and then see how they pan out, given that our roster is already at nearly max. but i see what you mean.

 

...and I forgot to mention that I actually think Morey will probably just play through the season with Tmac and let him walk in free agency. $20mil in next summer's economy is worth more than $20 mil in the economy for contracts signed 2-5 years ago.

 

I agree with this 100%.

 

While we are in evaluation mode - I want to point out that although we were one game away from the WCF, I don't consider LA to be a particularly good team anyway. This has been a down year for the western conference and if I'm Morey I think standing pat with the roster we have(even if everyone manager to stay healthy) is a recipe to underachieve(like the Lakers who clearly aren't tough enough to win the title). There is a difference between being a perennial WCF team, NBA Finals team, and NBA championship team. When you watch teams like Boston and Cleveland you can tell that the Lakers aren't in that class so the Rockets being almost good enough to beat LA isn't an achievement unto itself if the goal is winning it all.

 

I believe in Darryl Morey!

 

can't agree more. but you've gotta think morey is constantly trying to improve the team - just within the resource limits that les has given him.

 

Agreed - I feel like we have one of the best if not THE best GMs in the NBA right now. Did anyone happen to see in one of the recent ESPN magazines where they had an article on sports jobs and one of the people mentioned was one of Morey's statisticians who studied player's personal lives to determine how things like whether a player is married or how large their entourage is correlated to their on the court production. THAT is the sign of a thorough GM. I doubt you would find any ex player GMs who go into that much detail with the exception of Boston where Morey used to work.