Morey made a mistake last year for not locking Landry up and he shouldn't use the "lowball" strategy on Landry this year. However, we are where we are, so it's better to give Landry a condition contract: * Offer him a 4 year contract for $16 Mil with the last year as the team option. * If Landry play less than 70% of the game/season, his salary would be $2 Mil for that year...
Describing the Rockets' contract offer as "disturbing and confusing," the agent for unsigned draft pick Carl Landry said Wednesday that the team's offer is worse than every other second-round pick and many undrafted free agents. Buddy Baker said the Rockets have guaranteed Landry, the first player selected in the second round of June's NBA draft, only a small portion of a two-year contract. This implies the Rockets did not provide a 2 year guaranteed contract offer (at the min), sounds like they didn't even give him a fully guaranteed 1 year deal (but as I pointed out this was not all that different from the situation of other early 2nd rounders finding themselves on deep teams like McRoberts, Marcus Williams, Fazekus, etc). Such a deal (2 year min guaranteed), is usually the best deal a 2nd rounder can get. With few exceptions, AKA a proven foreign professional basketball player in a top Europe league. Now what Houston figured out with Novak, and this is probably a better deal for Hou than Novak, is you can use the MLE to make a team optional 3rd year at very low cost. Boston did the same with Pruitt (taking on a 3rd year team option after 2 years at the min), where as Big Baby got the better deal by not allowing to have the team option on year 3--strait two year guaranteed min. I am not entirely sure, but my using the MLE for a tad more than a league min contract for a guy you may even save cap space or lux tax, because I think all true minimum contracts have the same scale and the cost difference is shared by a league pool (1 year rook versus 12 year vet). Overall I think Landry and his agent were protecting his interests, as were the Rockets, nobody fathumed Landry would play as well as he did his rookie year, even if it was less than half the season. In hindsight we should have used passed on Francis and signed Landry to a 2 year or 3 year min with a team option. Can you imagine the uproar around here if we said, nah, we don't want Francis, he is doner than a 6PM Thanksgiving turkey, we would rather give that spot to Carl Landry. I remember a bunch of people who thought Jackie Butler could play too and wouldn't have given his spot to an unimpressive summer league player like Landry as well (I was right about Butler sucking and Francis being cooked, wrong about Landry not being able to contribute and Mike James being able to contribute).
I hate Buddy Baker. Where did Landry get this guy? Who else does he represent anyway? The guy is too freakin' proud and arrogant to be an agent. He's just going to ruin his client's chances.
This is what I'm a little confused about. Were the contracts offered to Landry last year the best ones possible after the Rockets signed Francis? Or did they intentionally lowball him after seeing his summer-league performance? If it's the former, I also wonder if people criticizing Morey are saying that we should not have signed Francis. The Houston Chronicle article from last year (link provided by rocketsregle in earlier post) makes it sound like the Rockets didn't have much a choice regarding Landry's contract, but they don't come right out and say it, either.
Desert Scar Since Francis had gotten a buyout package from Portland, couldn't the Rockets have paid Steve the league minimum instead of dipping into the MLE? Granted, by paying more than the league minimum, it gave the impression that the Rockets were aggressive in pursuing Steve.There might have been some interest from the Clippers or another team.
Steve said he was offered more money by the Heat and comparable money by several other teams. He also said it wasn't about the money but in the end the Rockets gave him the most when you add in his shoe deal. SO to answer your question Stevie was not taking the minimum to sign with us.
Thanks. If Luther had developed the ability to play backup PG for 10 minutes a game, then the Rockets might not be in this position with Landry.
I've got to give him credit for trying.Unfortunately he does not have the handle nor the passing ability to become a backup PG. Edit: I think that that the Rockets would have gone after Steve Francis because they were extremely unhappy with Rafer with good reason and even felt unsure after getting Mike James back.Perhaps 10 min a game or so by Head wouldn't have made a difference after all.
Not exactly. They did give up the choice of using part of the MLE to sign Landry. But they could have always gave him a league min deal guaranteed for 2 years--and he surely would have accepted. With few exceptions that is typically the best deal a 2nd rounder can get. I don't think the Rockets wanted to do that (guarantee 2 full years at the min) because with all their contracts and based on summer league play it looked like a 50/50 proposition at best Landry could make the 15 spot roster (way guarantee all that if he might be cut during the training camp, season or next offseason), and signing him to that kind of deal made it less likely to have a roster spot for say Deke or Francis.
Not to mention at the time they were in Lux Tax territory so each penny wasted was actually doubled. Still, they should have taken that risk.....you don't spend a million bucks to get a player then lowball him.....it was a terrible move by a rookie GM.....and the fact that Dorsey is waiting proves that Morey learned his lesson. DD
At the time that the Rockets traded for the Landry pick, the only big men on the Rockets were Yao and Chuck Hayes. I suppose that the Rockets were desperate to get (at the time) a third big man for the roster, so they were more willing to pay up for that pick. However, after the draft, the Rockets pulled off an unlikely trade that netted the Rockets both Luis Scola and Jackie Butler. They also managed to convince Mutombo to re-sign for another year. Also, Mike Harris surprised the team with his stellar summer league play. That is a total of four additional big men that the Rockets added AFTER the draft. Those are in addition to Steve Novak and Justin Reed (who are each more of a 3/4 player). Including them, the Rockets had 8 other players (7 of them with fully guaranteed deals) who played the PF/C positions. If not for all of the post-draft moves by the Rockets (also including the signing of Steve Francis for the remainder of the MLE), Landry would have been signed quickly to deal using a small portion of the MLE. But those moves changed the Rockets' thinking; and the $1M used to acquire the Landry pick not longer outweighed the subsequent roster glut.
If Buddy Baker thinks there's some natural entitlement that came with being a high 2nd round pick, and one that a team traded for, Buddy needs to google "James White."
I sent some emails to various sites asking about the TAU of Carl... *Tau have a vacant roster spot for a non-european player. Euro teams have a limit of 2 non-Euro players on their squads. *Allegedly James Singleton (signed with Mavs) was given a 2.5M euro contract last year. This was the richest signing in TAU's history.
Let him go to europe...I bet he gets the same stats in over 30 minutes..... except more turnovers and a WAY WORSE shooting percentage. SIGN HIM SIT HIM TRADE HIM.......a new start in Dec. for everyone.
not to mention that the money he will potentially make in Europe is tax free.. unless he plays in France
