MONEY!!! Lets think about it. The Rockets have a certain amount of money they can pay out this offseason. The Rockets will not sign webber or davis without having spoken to Hakeem first. Therefore, Hakeem is "unavailable" in order to stall negotiations with other free agents. If the Rockets sign a big time free agent, there wouldnt be anymore money left over for hakeem. He will wait until webber and davis have signed elsewhere. Then, all the cap money the rockets have will still be there. Guess who will be first in line for it? The dream. He will then sign a 1 year deal for a good chunk of that cap money. ------------------
Fine, if that is the case. We sign who we want to sign, even if this requires us initially renoucing Hakeem, and then we offer whatever is left to Hakeem in a 1 or 2 year deal. Leave it up to him to stay or leave the Rockets with a contract on the table (even if it is the league vet min, though hopefully we can do much better), it would be <i/> his decision to leave the Rockets [/i]. I really hope it doesn't come to this, but if he won't talk what can we do? Or am I missing something here where Hakeem has some power in the negotiations besides his legend (no small thing).
Personally I thinking he is hoping that the Rockets find away to sign Mo, Moochie and Shandon before talking to him and without renouncing his rights. That way he could tell CD that they could pay him what he wants with out sacraficing any of our free agents. ------------------
crash, I don't think we can sign any of our guys unless we renounce Hakeem's rights first - there's the basic problem! ------------------
The only person we can re-sign is Moochie because MManal told me in another thread that he has his early bird rights, something I didn't know. So we risk losing Mo to make Dream happy. So you know what we're left with? An aging, 38 year old center, and no PF outside of Kenny Thomas. Meanwhile we miss out on Antonio Davis, David Robinson, Marc Jackson, Nazr Mohammad, AND Maurice Taylor! Oh what fun this offseason would be if it came down to that! Loyalty to Dream that can set us back 3 or 4 years, or renouncing a pigheaded Dream to build for the future. ------------------ "Instruments are like women: After a while, you want to make love to another." - Nicolas Godin of the musical duo Air
We have early bird rights to Moochie and if we don't renounce Dream then we also have a middle class exception at 4.5 mil we can use for being over the cap. We also have early Bird rights on Anderson but all indications are that he has no intention of signing an early bird contract. ------------------
I'm sorry - I was under the impression that Anderson's opt out meant that his early bird rights were gone... oops! Thanks for the Mooch info! (+exception) ------------------
Actually I think I made a mistake about Shandon I don't think there are any Early Bird rights for him. Maybe one of the capoligists can explain. ------------------ [This message has been edited by crash5179 (edited July 10, 2001).]
Until we renounce him, we still have his Early Bird rights. ------------------ Nothing is impossible, if you believe it's possible.
In my mind, Hakeem is doing one of two things: 1) He has already decided to leave, and is attempting to make it look as if the Rox organization is responsible for losing him because they wouldn't pay enough, didn't want him enough, weren't loyal enough, etc... or 2) He is blatantly trying to get more $ than he is worth. No sane GM would pay $10mil for an aging ex-superstar who is injured 30-40% of the time and can only contribute 25 minutes when healthy. He is trying to milk his legend for more than it's worth, and make the organization look bad if he doesn't get what he wants. I'm inclined to believe #1 - he's already decided to leave. What'd he hire an agent for anyway? surely not to talk to the CD, he can do that himself (he's a savvy businessman in his own right). No, Feagan has contacts throughout the NBA; he's there to call everyone except the Rockets. I smell a rat. Do all agents smell that way? ------------------
