[ClutchFans] Houston Rockets Salary Cap Update: 2012-13 Training Camp Edition

Did a little calculation based on the roster cuts today. Seems the Rockets have about $7.8M in cap room right now. See table below (may have missed some stuff for the 2013-14 portion, but decent rough estimate, I think). Also, the 2013-14 "max cap room" assumes the Rockets cut Delfino, Smith and Machado (I think all of them are fully non-guaranteed for next season) but pick up the Aldrich, Patterson and Morris options.

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<table class="tableizer-table">
<tr class="tableizer-firstrow"><th></th><th>Player</th><th>&nbsp;</th><th>2012/2013</th><th>2013/2014</th></tr> <tr><td>1</td><td>Omer Asik</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>$8,374,646 </td><td>$8,374,646 </td></tr> <tr><td>2</td><td>Jeremy Lin</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>$8,374,646 </td><td>$8,374,646 </td></tr> <tr><td>3</td><td>Shaun Livingston*</td><td>waived</td><td>$1,000,000 </td><td> </td></tr> <tr><td>4</td><td>Carlos Delfino</td><td>2nd yr Non-Guaranteed</td><td>$3,000,000 </td><td>$3,000,000 </td></tr> <tr><td>5</td><td>Patrick Patterson</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>$2,096,760 </td><td>$3,105,302 </td></tr> <tr><td>6</td><td>Toney Douglas</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>$2,067,880 </td><td> </td></tr> <tr><td>7</td><td>Marcus Morris</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>$1,905,360 </td><td>$1,987,320 </td></tr> <tr><td>8</td><td>Royce White</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>$1,645,440 </td><td>$1,719,480 </td></tr> <tr><td>9</td><td>Gary Forbes*</td><td>waived</td><td>$1,500,000 </td><td> </td></tr> <tr><td>10</td><td>Terrence Jones</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>$1,485,000 </td><td>$1,551,840 </td></tr> <tr><td>11</td><td>Donatas Motiejunas</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>$1,361,400 </td><td>$1,422,720 </td></tr> <tr><td>12</td><td>JaJuan Johnson</td><td>waived</td><td>$1,089,240 </td><td> </td></tr> <tr><td>13</td><td>Jon Brockman</td><td>waived</td><td>$1,000,000 </td><td> </td></tr> <tr><td>14</td><td>Chandler Parsons</td><td>2nd yr Non-Guaranteed</td><td>$888,250 </td><td>$926,500 </td></tr> <tr><td>15</td><td>Greg Smith</td><td>Non-guaranteed</td><td>$762,195 </td><td>$884,293 </td></tr> <tr><td>16</td><td>Derek Fisher *</td><td>waived</td><td>$644,005 </td><td> </td></tr> <tr><td>17</td><td>Scott Machado</td><td>Yr 1 50% guaranteed</td><td>$473,604 </td><td>$788,872 </td></tr> <tr><td>18</td><td>James Harden</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>$5,820,417 </td><td> $13,668,750.00 </td></tr> <tr><td>19</td><td>Daequan Cook</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>$3,090,942 </td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr> <tr><td>20</td><td>Cole Aldrich</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>$2,445,480 </td><td>$3,245,152 </td></tr> <tr><td>21</td><td>Lazard Hayward*</td><td>waived</td><td>$1,174,080 </td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr> <tr><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td></tr> <tr><td>SUM</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>$50,199,345 </td><td> $49,049,521.00 </td></tr> <tr><td>SUM-Minimum</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td> </td><td>$49,581,445.50 </td><td> $44,376,356.00 </td></tr> <tr><td>Cap</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td> $58,044,000.00 </td><td> $58,044,000.00 </td></tr> <tr><td>Min Cap Room</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td> $7,844,655.00 </td><td> $8,994,479.00 </td></tr> <tr><td>Max Cap Room</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td>&nbsp;</td><td> $8,462,554.50 </td><td> $13,667,644.00 </td></tr></table>

 

I have a slightly unrelated question. Why are player options hard to trade. I remember that Morey didn't want to give Dragic a 4 year deal with the player option because it made the contract harder to trade I believe. Why is that?

 

Because the player, not the team, decides whether or not whether he can opt in or not, creating a burden on the team budget.

If said player gets a crappy injury, but has a player option, he can exercise it whether or not his production demands it.

 

Just straight up flexibility. The last two years of the contract are big risk for the team if the player declines, or has drastic injuries.

Plus if the last year or their contract is non-guaranteed it makes the player a trade asset going into 2 years left on their deal which can essentially make the contract expiring after one year if the team wishes.

Ex: Sam Dalembert contract from last year. Morey knew that if he was to agree to sign Dalembert last year it would only be with that team option. The reason is that he was never in Morey's plans unless he could turn him into an asset either at the deadline or the following Summer.

-Delfino's contract if setup very similarly. Wouldn't be shocked if he only spends a year in Houston like Dalembert.

You really don't see team options with superstar max level contracts because of the negotiating power of the superstar. They are much easier to negotiate with Veteran role player contracts. The angle from the NBA front office is "we will give you a higher salary in the first year, but place a team option on the second season." Its a no-brainer for both parties.

To the veteran player, if they play their butt off and prove that they are still a valuable player that team can't live without, they essentially DOUBLE the contract they would have gotten by the team picking up the second or third year option. Not a bad deal for a veteran who still thinks he has something left in the tank.

So when Dragic was offered a player option for the last year of his deal, it would have potentially killed the flexibility of the team if he turned out to be anything less than a superstar. He would have been un-moveable for at least 2 years as opposed to the one 1/2 years that Lin/Asik would be hard to move. (Asik is already showing that he might actually be an actual bargain at the price Morey got him at.)

With the Lin/Asik contracts, they were only 3 year deals to begin with, so there was very little risk involved unless they sucked in their first season with the Rockets. If they do anything this season, and part of next, they will at least be considered large expiring contracts in the final year of their deals, which have high trade value to teams because they can get clear your salary cap very easily in a trade to wipe the books and start over again.

Long, drawn out explanation, but the short answer is flexibility.

 

Awesome. Thanks Bima and Carl.

 

Great stuff. Looks a little funny to see Lin and Asik raking in more dough than Harden this year.

 

Thanks!

 

I have a question for Bima, I see we have max ability for 2013 offseason, we would need to not tender Douglas(Obvious decision), renounce Cook, Aldrich, but could we also be able to keep Delfino and still have max room?

And Also 2014 offseason, is the cap room there at all?

I know that would be Lin and Asik's final seasons under contract plus Harden and Max #2.

 

No. Cutting Delfino would be needed for truly enough room for most max deals. That said, I could see the Rockets trading someone as well.

 

Question. If we had hypothetically re-signed Dragic & gotten Omer (so no Lin). And we had still been able to get Harden. Would Dragic/Omer/Harden contracts have made it harder to sign another max contract? Or would we be in the same situation as we are now with Lin/Asik/Harden ie. still able to sign another max contract.

Would appreciate a response. Thanks in advance.

 

Dragic makes a little less than Lin, so no, it would not made it harder to sign a max guy. Not next year anyway. Dragic is under contract for 4 years, Lin only 3.

 

HMMHMMM is correct. I might be able to elaborate a little bit further here because I think I see the root of the question you're getting at. Does the Lin/Asik contracts make it easier or harder for Morey to make the aquisition for a secondary star?... Good question.

Goran make a little under a million less than Lin yearly, but that last year of Dragic's contract is really the deal breaker here. Lin should actually be much easier to trade given the shorter length of this contract after this season. The other obvious reason is his popularity & marketability.

Its debatable which PG is better, but its pretty obvious who is the better PG for a team that wants to stay flexible while they build a roster around youth, and still keep league/fan/media interest in the meantime.

To give a little figure for you ... MSG, the media owner of the Knicks, gained 71 Million dollars in market capitilization in just 8 days of Linsanity last season. At 8.3 Mil a season, thats a steal for any NBA franchise to say the least. Not sure Goran Dragic has the same financial affect off the court as Jeremy Lin.(side note-the Knicks are run by morons)

Back to trades - The additional 1 million Lin is making isn't really the deciding factor in trading for a max contract player to be quite honest. The main factor now is actually not having enough large contracts to send out in a trade as such which will make it difficult to aquire a max contract player without sending half of the team in the trade. The Rockets could really use another Kevin Martin on an expiring to trade right now.

(I bet Morey really wishes he would have been able to somehow structure a deal that would have had Scola's contract expiring at a much larger rate this season.)

Here's an example why-

Lets say Memphis agrees to send Houston Rudy Gay for expiring contracts, young talent, and 2 draft picks. Click the link below to see what the trade would have to look like to get the deal done-

http://espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=d9o8ls6

So Houston would have to send 5 players, and get only Gay back. Houston would be at the league minimum of 12 roster players, and Memphis would have to cut 2 players in order to keep at the league maximum. Just imagine how much harder it would be to trade for a player making an extra 5 mil on top of that.

As you see, a trade for a max level player could work this season, but its going to be hard to do without sending Asik or Lin to match salaries since that trade would most likely put the Rockets over the cap. A "super max" level player will be virtually impossible to pull off unless Lin/Asik are involved.

Hope that helped make some sense into the cap implications here for upcoming trades and why its oh so important that Lin and Asik are very tradeable players here in the near future. I do not think either will be traded any time soon, but it wouldn't be a huge shock if the right max contract player all the sudden became free and Morey had to include one of them in the deal.

 

Thank you for responding Dobro. So in an essence I am correct that Lin's/Asik contract makes it easier in terms of acquiring a max contract player.

Let's say an opportunity comes to acquire Howard for example. Because Lin's contract does not have a player option (as you said after my first question that Dragics contract with the PO is a lot harder to trade than Lin's without that PO, in terms of flexibility) we could hypothetically move him half way through the second year of his contract to acquire Howard if the need arose. After all like you said his contract would be a massive expiring & would only be on the new teams books for another 1.5 years. However in the case of Dragic because his contract has a player option it would be a less moveable than Lin's deal if we were trying to trade him for Howard. After all like you said if Dragic were to get injured or decline in his 2nd year & was traded he could pick up his player option and the LAL would be forced to have a unhealthy player for another two years on their books.

So in an essence neither contract impedes the Rockets from signing another max player. But the lack of a player option makes Lin's more tradable if we are trying to get a max player as opposed to Dragics with the player option.

Does that make sense?

 

So it is possible for us to acquire an expiring(like martin) in current situation ?thanks in advance.

 

It's possible to acquire an expiring like Martin in any situation.

 

I have another question, not sure if Bima is the one or someone else can answer, but here goes. And all numbers are Bima's and Storytellerscontracts.com.

Say we trade in season for Josh Smith, not sure his experience, for Patterson, Morris, and Jones, then if leagal, guarantee the first we owe them, plus NYKs 2 2nds we got.

I did the math in an excel sheet, and it seems if we did that, and gave Smith Max like Harden, we would actually have cap room for 2013-2014, of course we would neeed renounce Aldrich, Cook and Douglas in order, plus we could keep Delfino.

Then we would have a Starting 5 of

C- O.Asik
PF- J.Smith
SF- C.Parsons
SG- J.Harden
PG- J.Lin

Six Man- C.Delfino
R.White
Motiejunas
G.Smith
Machado

I just get these ideas of trades in my head to better our team. It would see we would have cap room in 2014-2015, not Max, but good money to sign some guys.

 

You are correct. Not only does it not impede their search for another star, its actually helps as long as their on the court performance stays par or improves this season(which it should).

The 4th year on Dragic's contract makes him nearly untradeable in his first two seasons. With a 3 year contract its really only difficult to move that player in the first season of their contract.

However in Jeremy Lin's case, if he can walk & chew at the same time on the basketball court, the business side of Jeremy Lin makes him extremely appealing to take back in trade if another team somehow have to give up a star player.

Either way though(even if Jeremy Lin or Asik are included in a deal) its going to be very challenging for the Rockets to aquire a Super Max contract player like Howard making over 18 Mil. If for some reason the Rockets traded Asik or Lin alone, they would only be able to aquire a player making 15.8 mil or less with the cap space they currently have this season(7.5mil).

-However, keep in mind Douglas, Aldrich, and D. Cook have a combined 7.6 mil in expiring contracts this season that can be used in combination of either player in a trade for a max player as well. Delfino also has a team option on next years contract that makes him very tradeable as well.

So the Rockets have options for trading for a max player, but its going to be virtually impossible to trade for a super max player(18 to 22 Mil) without giving up Lin or Asik in the deal. Right now its more feasible to see the Rockets using some variation of their expiring contracts along with their 7.5 mil in cap space & some picks to take on a player in the 10 to 15 mil salary range to keep both players.

If they are sending out either player(Asik or Lin), it would probably need to be someone like Howard(committing to sign long term).

 

Excellent. You don't know how much I appreciate you responding to my questions so promptly. I am sure I will have more hypothetical questions in the near future lol that I will likely run by you. Thanks once again. Happy Monday.

 

No problem. Its a slow Monday here in the office and nearly all of my clients are in NYC so yeah.