We have no money to offer him since we gave the full MLE to Ariza. We could only offer him the minimum.
we got some rookies that are equal or not better in potential to wafer. dump wafer and cook. sign the rookies, and bring back marty lunuen from overseas!
Actually, it has little to do with Brian Cook (although he IS the biggest waste of a contract on the team by far). The Rockets are SO far over the salary cap this summer that his contract/salary doesn't make a difference regarding cap room. Even when Von Wafer had his first string of good games, the Rockets knew that the only way to re-sign him for above the league minimum was to use a portion of the MLE. The Bi-Annual Exception (worth just under $2M) is not available to the Rocket this summer because the used it last year on Brent Barry. So, if you want to blame anyone, blame Trevor Ariza for not agreeing to take a little less than the full MLE in order to enable the Rockets to also re-sign Wafer. Personally, I don't blame Ariza.
The team got players that can replace Wafer from the draft. If Wafer insists on what he think is his worth then let him walk but if no other teams offer him more then what the Rockets are offering then sign Him. Its best having a player that knows the system and hopefully builds on last year's success.
I seriously doubt he meant the actual salary cap. He means by having Brian Cook's dead weight we are too close to the lux tax threshold to sign any one more than 1 or 2 mil per year. his 3.5 mil makes a big difference when you consider we're soo close to the lux tax threshold. In fact aren't we over the projected lux tax line now that we've signed my new fav Rocket Ariza for the full MLE??? I thought we'd actually have a larger room under the lux tax threshold due to the salary of ron ron and luther head coming off our cap but I read somewhere Ariza pushes us over the lux tax limit...hmm
Regardless of Cook being on the team or not, we CAN'T sign Wafer to anything but the minimum... We are over the cap as is and don't have bird rights... The mid-level was going to be the only way Von got more money than the minimum....
I am aware of that...but the point I was making was how if we are, say, 1 mil below the lux tax limit...that way we could ONLY be willing to sign him to a minimum contract. Whereas if we were say, 3 mil below the lux tax, then I'm sure we'd be much more willing to sign him to a multiyear deal starting at 3 million per year. Even though we might not be able to sign Wafer, I'm sure if we had 2-3 million room below the lux tax we could do a sign and trade for someone like Joey Graham, who I'd LOVE to have on this team.
Magics took our Rafer and did a VC trade and we get left with Brian Cook, who we can't get rid of, unless we pay someone to take him........... Ughhh reminds me of the time when we moochie or Mo Taylor. Nobody wanted them.
Cook would be useful come trade deadline. His expiring salary would be manageable and very attractive for teams wanting to go below the cap or making space for the free agency of 2010.
Luxury tax has nothing to do with this (other than making Wafer more expensive to Les Alexander). We're talking about the salary cap. There is NO ROOM, under NBA rules, for the Rockets to sign Von Wafer to anything except the league minimum. Even if Les Alexander wanted to sign Von Wafer to a lucrative deal (luxury tax be damned), he COULD NOT. The rules won't allow it. It is impossible. No can do. How many times does this concept have to be explained to people???
We can't sign him or anyone to 2-3 million if the team is under the luxury tax but still above the salary cap. So, it doesn't make sense unless you are talking about a sign and trade using our trade exception from the Francis trade... Which you haven't brought up in the last few posts.
Apparently, we haven't done it enough. They just want to spend hypothetical money that Les "needs" to spend to make this team great...
ok I know your eager to tell everyone that Von CANT BE SIGNED FOR MORE THAN THE MINIMUM, but trust me I know that fact since the moment I heard we signed Ariza...look dude your missing my point here. I wasn't talking specifically about Wafer, in fact the only point I was making, with full knowledge of the fact that Wafer can only be signed by us for the minimum, is that since Les is not willing to go over the lux tax (at least for this upcoming season due to injuries of core players), we only have the the salary cap room BELOW the lux tax to work with. my point is if we have 3 mil under lux tax we can sign a FA upto 3 mil, but if we are only 1 mil below lux tax then chances are we are only going to sign someone for the minimum EVEN if we have the ability to offer him more. Hence I said "even we might not get Wafer, we can get Joey Graham for 3 mil IF WE HAD THE ROOM UNDER LUX TAX(S&t)"
I clearly mentioned a sign and trade. We don't HAVE to use our trade exceptions although its probably best in the other teams' interest to do so. We can simply sign and trade player for player e.g. graham for cook. But in that case I was referring to our trade exception. I guess I forgot to clarify that but I thought it was pretty obvious that was the only path we can go down since no one wants Cook's bad contract and we wouldn't be willing to give up anyone else. Plus someone like Graham isn't worth giving up anything anyways which I thought was common sense.
This is where we are disagreeing with what you are saying. You might know that we can't sign anyone but your words are somewhat saying the exact opposite. We can't sign anyone unless it's for the minimum. We all agree to this. We can trade for a salary up to 2.6 million because of the Francis trade exception. However, like you said, a 2.6 million dollar contract will actually cost us $5.2 million bc we are over the luxury cap.
