Given today's news, will Yao and Francis be with this team in 3 years???.........

I don't think Maloney counts against the salary cap

 

Well first of all I DONT stay on this 24/7, in fact Iam not on here very much at all.Second, oh come my response isnt worthy of a reply? I guess it must be good to be so much smarter than everyone else.

 

Who wouldn't? I mean that honestly. What makes you think the Rockets won't be offering him the max? Don't give me the crap about them not throwing money at Brown either. That has nothing to do with Yao. We don't even know how exactly that went down so its not a valid argument when dealing with Yao. Les has been willing to pay guys like Cato and MoT huge amounts of money and they have neither the promise nor the performance of Yao.

 

i don't think there is a doubt the rockets would offer Yao the max. There is nothing to indicate they wouldn't. We can have 2 max players on the team.

 

A-Train-
Yes, he does. He was released (waived) and the Rockets must pay him the balance of what was owed and that hits the cap. I think next season may be the last and the hit is around $2.5m.

There are some variables to the cap hit based upon whether he is offered a contract by another team but since Maloney is currently unemployed, he is "ours". This would be the case whether he was waived or had a buyout...there is a cap hit either way.

 

it's kinda like San Antonio giving Duncan the max then this summer turning around and using the max on kidd or O'neal.

Yao and Steve would take up approx half of the cap if they both had the max. By the time Yao is eligible for the max, some of these terrible contracts like Cato and Moochie should expire or are very close to expiring. The rockets will do anything to keep Yao, because is a very marketable player.

 

you keep saying that 2 $75 mill contracts are unheard of but if you break that up into separate years, say 8 mill per person per year against the cap, that adds up to about 16 mill for that year. If the cap is about 45-50 mill, doesn't that leave around 30-35 mill more per year you can sign other players with? All our big(and poorly) contracted guys will be free agents in 06' or 07'. Mooch, Cato, MoT...all those guys could be gone. I'm thinking we would still be pretty confortable giving Yao and Steve the max while getting other guys with 30 or so mil to spare, right?

 

exactly severe rockets fan, you got it, that's why i can only laugh when i read some of this stuff. Yao will be a rocket.

 

By the time Yao's contract ends in 2006 Rice's 36 million and Cato's 42 Million will be off the books. Those two are less productive than Yao. There will be plenty of room to bump Yao's 18 mill up to 75-85 mill. Also Mobley's 31 mill ends in 2005.

Spending lots of money on a coach is an entirely different beast than paying to keep one what should be one few dominant centers left in the league at that point. The rockets have never had two young superstars at the same time in the modern era. It will be uncharted but it will happen. The only way Yao doesn't stay is if Yao doesn't want to.

I expect the next coach will be the one Les feels will best suite Yao's personality to keep the big guy happy and will not be based solely upon money. Les is looking pretty stingy right now but we can't really judge until we see what he does when he hires his coach. Then again everyone will just argue that he only spent money to cover himself, sigh.

 

I didnt say I was more intelligent than you! NOBODY is smarter than you, and your right the rockets will disban in 3 more years. In fact they wont even be in Houston in 3 years. You are God of Basketball. You know what, from what I have read in this thread and others that you have commented in that you are just out to argue with someone, and like a moron I fell into your trick, I do feel stupid for playing your VERY silly immature little boy games!

And just for the record, only time will tell who is right. I guess we will all know the truth in 3 years wont we?

 

Sage-
I totally disagree with the logic.

Had we counter offered for Brown it would have had no effect on the open market value of Dunleavy, Van Gundy or Carlisle. If your Mike Dunleavy you have two choices - the Hawks or the Rockets. The offer you get from the Hawks is the only one impacting your Rockets' negotiations. Brown's contract would have impacted Dunleavy only if they were the only two candidates...they're not.

Further, while I don't disagree that there is a delicate balance between $ for coaches and $ for players, we part ways after that. In general terms, the additional money we needed to spend on Larry Brown (assuming we could have monetarialy persuaded him) is in the same range as the MLE. If there is a choice between using the MLE for 2003-04 or using that $ for Brown, I spend the money on a Brown counter offer. Brown's presence would improve the team more than just about any realistic 2003-04 FA signing.

 

I agree with those that have commented that Les not paying $25 mil for Brown has NOTHING to do with whether or not they will re-sign Yao. That is a no brainer, of course we will sign Yao for the max barring some horrendous turn of events.

Deuce, I think that the LONG list of teams with 2 or more max salary players (contained in an earlier post) should show you that we can afford both Yao and Steve. In fact, it is generally accepted wisdom that it takes at least two superstars to win it all in this league. Are you saying that in all these cases one of the stars was forced to take a salary cut? I don't think so. Most of the time it is the third option that has to take a lower salary. Rice and Richmond did it with the Lakers, Grant and Rodman did it with the Bulls, and Barkley did it with the Rox (even though we didn't win it all that year).

I think the real question might be, "will we be able to afford Mobley once Yao commands the max?" If not, who will be our third option and how much will they have to sacrifice their salary for the good of the team?

 

Duece I think you just might be a glass is half empty kind of guy. And I am quite suprised that an engineer would come up with a conclusion that is so off base considering all the information points in the other direction. We have seen Les overpay players over and over again. Rudy is very highly paid as a coach. There has been one instance of a rumor that Les would not pay a coach that nobody here knows for sure that Les really wanted to hire in the first place. I think that this may be one of the weakest conclusions, based on the evidence at hand, that you could possibly have come up with.

How about this for an alternative conclusion:

Les has always admired LB as a coach and found himself looking for a coach when LB happened to be available. Everybody including Les but especially the media think LB may be the best coach available. So Les contacts LB about coaching the Rockets. He spends a couple of days getting to know LB and discovers that the guy is a real flake and seems pretty unstable but Les is still interested based on the hype and LB's previous sucess. Along comes Detroit, who couldn't have spent as much time with LB as we have all heard that Les did, and they offer this guy the moon. Les has to decide, do I offer the Moon + 10% and get into a bidding war over a guy who has proven to be more than a little unstable over the years and hasn't really shown me that he wants to coach my team or do I let him go.

I think Les made the right choice, he had a lot more information to make a decision than anybody on this board. Maybe... just maybe Les has learned a little from some of his mistakes and is done overpaying because it seemed like the right thing to do on the spur of the moment. But I am certainly not about to conclude that this means he is done paying for proven talent based on a rumor. Anyone who would follow this logic much less try to defend it or get others to follow it might need to spend a little more time thinking and a little less typing.

 

Number one, Im not your sweetheart! Number two, I have never called you an idiot. You have been the only one to sink low enough to name calling.

I simply think that you are over reacting. I think it has been stated over and over again that Les is all about winning. I was in the "Brown Camp" I was highly disappointed that we didnt get him. However, OkieRock spoke it right when he said the Rockets know this situation better than we do.

Im sure we all have our doubts about what direction this team is going in, I think you would be foolish to not question that. However, I do believe that most of us will be happy with the coach that is chosen in the end. They are taking their time but there must be a reason behind it. These guys(NBA GM's) are smooth business men, and when it comes down to who I trust I promise you it wont be some guy sitting on the other end of the computer in his parent's cellar downloading nude pictures off the internet! It will be a Carol Dawson, or a Jerry West that I will trust thank you very much.

finally it is important that none of us panic until there is reason to panic! Why cant we all just get along?