my scenario is Not re-sign Thabeet,let Flynn and Dragic go. Stretch buy-out Dalembert’s $1.5mil 2012 option so it only counts $500,000 against Salary Cap. Left w/ Martin,Scola,Lowry,Hill,Williams,Patterson,Morris,Motie(coming over),Bud,Parsons. About $41mil in salary. We must get rid of scola's contract and theres no point in keeping lowry if we getting deron which leave us with 27 mil in salary. Scola and Lowry would get traded for some cap relief and a young player/draft pick or a STARTING SF,freeing up more room to sign Dwight,Williams. That will leave us enough for 2 $16mil deals. MLE available for Lee. Dwill, Llull Martin, Lee, Twill XXX, Morris, Parsons Patterson, Monty Dwight, Hill
I don't know why we just arbitrarily get rid of Scola. Him and Howard would perfectly compliment each other. Also... it wouldn't be the end of the world to have Lowry come off the bench and get some play in at the 2.
Cap space, regarding both Scola and Lowry. I wouldn't risk it unless we can get some good old-fashioned collusion going and assurances that D-Will and Howard actually would want want to be here.
Comparing the way Dwill and Lowry are playing right now, I'd rather have Lowry. Dwill didn't have such a hot season last year either. He's got the name recognition, but right now that's about it.
We have the cap space without trading Scola and Lowry though. If we don't bring anyone back, we'll have 25Mil on the books given to Lowry, Martin, Scola, Morris, Dalembert's 1.5 million garunteed money after being cut. 33 million to spend... and you COULD bring back Budinger for 1 million (and we don't have to make the decision there until the offseason), we could bring back Patterson for 2 million and Jordan Hill for 3.6 (we probably have to make those decisions soon). Twill, Flynn and Thabeet are all gone next year IMO. Lee and Dragic are unrestricted and probably gone if we do this. If we keep Budinger and Patterson, we'll have 30 million to spend. We could probably double sign and trade Lowry for Williams, and then flat out sign Howard. We would have our starting line up... sure, we'd be weak at the 3 still but you'd have Williams/Howard/Scola/Martin as your core. That's on par with those guys in Miami IMO... they have nobodies at PG and C and get away with it.
Lowry is a keeper. Just for his hustle alone. You just can't trade this guy. While trading for Paul or D-Will is an improvement at point guard, it doesn't improve the team by that much. I'd much rather try to improve SF or C before trying to upgrade a position we are good at. The drop off in talent from Paul/Williams to Lowry is less than the drop off in talent from Howard to Hill.
Why get Deron Williams when we already have Kyle Lowry? DW is a bit better but he's also making more than 3x what Lowry is making. Why pay that much for a minimal upgrade, when you can use the cap for something else?
I wouldn't trade Lowry for Dwill, to do so would be a waste of money an asset's. Rocket fans always want to have a star player and now that we have one we should support him and stop talking about trading him for other points.
