CP3's contract doesn't look bad to me - it's all relative

Ok

 

Vucevic/horford + brogdon >>>>> cp3

Kemba walker >>>>> cp3

 

Cp3 was hugely important to us his first year. In order to keep him Morey had to give him this deal. Still think it was the right thing. No one predicted the fall off. Hes no scrub just not 40 mil money. At the time it was no over pay

 

It's all up to CP3 to determine if the remainder of his contract is a disaster or not.

 

Nah it's still a bad contract, but it was necessary. Paul is the highest paid player on the team and this postseason he may not have even been the second best. Paul didn't even play 60 games this year......I think that's going to be the new normal as well. I still think he can be effective if coached properly and in the right offensive system. Unfortunately, as of right now the Rockets don't have either.

 

He’s more expensive (per year) than all of these guys. At his age and injury history he is not better than these guys. Prime Paul yes he was a better player but he’s past his prime and declining. Brogdon is a much better deal-Much younger, longer, better shooter and half the price. Your delusional. If it wasn’t for harden avg almost 40 covering up for morey he wouldn’t have a 50 win playoff team.

 

Problem is assuming that other teams don't approve. If CP3 doesn't prove that last year was just an off year and not a year of decline then the Rockets are in bad shape.

This explains why Morey was willing to trade Capela and Gordan for Butler in order to have CP3 as our 3rd option instead of our 2nd.

 

Keep in mind Andrew Wiggins is widely panned as the worst deal in the league. He’s also making 10m less than cp3, younger, avg more points, and playing a more important position than pail. Yeah I get it he doesn’t do much else but keep in mind we are comparing Chris Paul’s to one of the WORST here.

 

Almost all of these players are better than Paul currently

 

There was no way to renege on our under-the-table agreement with Chris Paul and his agent once Paul agreed to opt in, risk not getting his ****-you money 1 year earlier than he could, and facilitate that trade to the Rockets in the summer of 2017. Because of that opt-in, CP only made 24.3M on the year that he helped guide our Rockets to a franchise record 65 wins and one win away from the championship.

When you factor that year into it, our Chris Paul experience will cost us 184M over five years or roughly 31M per year. Yes, he lost a step last year. Yes, his shooting was the second worst he's had in any year since 2007. But, look at Jason Kidd's career, John Stockton's career, Steve Nash, Gary Payton, etc. Go to Basketball Reference and look up his career stats: these are the guys that Chris Paul deserves to be compared to. (Highest similarity scores for Paul are Jerry West, Oscar Robertson, Magic Johnson, but I'm excluding those because of Paul's significantly smaller size).

All those guys I mentioned continued to contribute significantly in their age 34-36 seasons, posting win share seasons above 7, 8, 9 multiple times. When you look at the % salary cap that Paul is taking up, that continues to make his deal worthwhile. Not as great a deal as Harden is, but this is the argument for keeping him. Chris Paul will be about as fast as he was last year, but his shooting should regress back to the mean (career 37.0% 3pt shooter, 35.8% last year, 27.0% in the playoffs). He will continue to run the second unit better than almost any team in the league.

Stop buying into the nationwide media narrative that says that we are a malignant club that is going to suck worse each and every year forward and deserve every bit of strife headed our way. We are still a juggernaut now that the NBA has been completely jumbled up. If the champions of the past decade have told you ANYTHING, it's that continuity is paramount. Not since the Celtics of 2008 has a team been assembled from scratch and gone onto win a championship that same year. Not the Lebron Heat, not the Duncan / Kawhi Spurs, not the splash brothers Warriors, and not the Toronto Raptors have won in the first year that their most important parts joined up. I am pretty confident that the Lakers and Nets won't win for this reason. The NBA is right there for the taking next year: we just need health luck and continued progression from the young depth who have been here a while now: Capela, House, Clark, and Hartenstein.

 

Fn warriors .. they still done though