Blazers buy Fernandez for 3 mil Ok, I put this here strictly because the Rox have acknowledged that Fernandez was their first choice on draft night. Essentially, the Suns just sold another drafted player for cash. I guess that's fine, but for 3 million, couldn't Les have been a player in this deal, since it was known that Rudy was our #1 target? Yes, the Blazers also picked up James Jones, and the article mentions a trade exception as the thing which enabled Portland to acquire Jones.. but he couldn't have been making that much, so would this deal have just been impossible for us at all? Couldn't we have simply paid the 3 million to Phoenix and not worried about getting James Jones too? I am in no way a capologist so I don't know if this would have been possible at all. Also, Portland now has something like 18 guys slated to be on their roster, including 6 (SIX!!) rookies. Could it be that we may still be in play for Fernandez after this deal goes down? The Blazers do not have room for those guys, several of them are going to get kicked to the curb or dealt. Maybe Portland intends for Rudy to stay overseas one more year, I don't know. But still, more of those guys have to go. Maybe we deal a future 2nd for McRoberts, or, considering Portland's youth movement, maybe Raef comes here. What kind of sick money is Raef making now? Would he completely out of the question? We know he can shoot, and he would be their oldest player at age 31, so he would maybe be a better choice than PJ Brown or Joe Smith. I dunno, I just saw this deal out there and it made me wonder if there might still be some hope of still grabbing Fernandez, even after this.
That was the problem. I think Phoenix wanted to get rid of Jones, so in order to make salaries match we would have needed to use a trade exception or trade players to make up the difference. Since the Blazers had a large enough trade exception, it wasn't a problem for them.
It seems to me Phoenix has been in dumping salary to avoid ltax mode for a while. Getting 3 mil and not having to pay James Jones as well as a rookie salary who probably wouldn't have broken the rotation were all good things in Phoenix's eyes. The Rockets couldn't offer the same financial relief. In addition Phoenix has no desire to help us get better as we are closer o passing them then Portland. So to answer your question. No, the Rockets didn't have what anything Phoenix wanted to get the deal done.
The Rockets could certainly provide the same kind of deals to the Suns to get James Jones & #24. Sura + 1 million cash for James Jones. 3 million cash for #24. The Suns can waive Sura with 1 million cash and get the same cap relief similiar to TE. The difference is: Paul Allen treats the Blazers as a toy and wants a better toy and money is not a concern. Les treats the Rockets as a business.
I don't see us still in play, since it's been stated in the press that Fernandez is staying in Europe for another year. Maybe next year.
That's because Sura's contract is about a million MORE than Jones'. Which means that the Rockets could have put together a more enticing deal in offering to take on one more contract.
I don't know why some people seem to think that the Rockets only need to "match" Portland's offer. Portland is no threat to the Suns in the playoffs before Nash stops being awesome. The Rockets are, even if they are simply a minor threat. Hence, for the Suns to deal with the Rockets, we'd need to BEAT Portland's offer by quite a bit for the Suns to consider us a trading partner. And guess what? The Rockets can't do it. It's not feasible unless they give Phoenix a rotation player, which would be ludicrous from the Rockets standpoint.
Well, if you look at how the draft played out, the Rockets seemed to get rather unlucky with how the picks happened. If you believe the comments made by Daryl Morey, they had a deal in place with the Heat to move up to #20 for Fernandez. When that fell through, and the Sixers went big, there was an extremely high chance that either Morris Almond or Fernandez was going to fall to #26; as the Bobcats have made a history of doing all their scouting during the NCAA tournament, and everybody knew the Knicks were going to pick Wilson Chandler. I'm actually surprised that Phoenix didn't draft Fernandez for themselves; he's exactly their kind of player, and is going to stay overseas another year so he won't contribute to team salary. Anyways, if Morey was to trump Portland's offer, perhaps by offering Sura for Jones and Eric Piatkowski (have the Suns cut him yet?), + $3MM, that would be a grand offer of approximately $9MM over two years, irrespective of luxury tax concerns. That is pretty steep for any owner, in fact, every owner except for Paul Allen. Teams without any picks in the first, such as Cleveland, Indiana, even Dallas, didn't pony up. It's also a hell of a lot for a player who might not even come over ever; this guy is going to have to give up some serious cash for four years of his prime to play in the NBA. I am curious to see how much the Rockets gave up to get Landry, however. If it's over a million, I might start to worry a bit about Morey...
