Jeremy Lin, Omer Asik #20 on NBA's worst contracts list

Short window to win it all with Dwight

 

Thats funny because his numbers when playing without melo or harden are right around 20 and 6 and possibly even better from what i can recall

 

So you're implying he'd only put up those numbers on a lottery team?

 

?? no i'm implying that dragic is the best scoring option for the Suns and therefore he dominates the ball.

 

Your overrating Jeremy Lin as a player. Dragic is putting up better numbers because he's a better basketball player. No hate, it's was it is

 

if it's a short window where only barkley's midget can fit through then we better start getting a better coach and maybe ask harden to try just a little on d. We're not getting anywhere if players can't play within a system and respect that system. So I'm not buying that win now crap. Like every great team, we need to take our slumps and grow.

 

Lol at all these Dragic thing. It's done and dusted.

Moving on, guys.

 

No. Dragic is putting up better numbers because he's the primary ball handler and is pretty much the primary scorer on the team.

 

Asik's and Lin's contracts are hard to trade for fair value, but that's different from a bad contract. These contracts have not prevented the Rockets from doing what they wanted to do to spend money on other players. And while Lin may be somewhat overpaid, neither salary is really out of whack with the player's value.

And, yeah Dragic would have been nice but his contract runs through 2016. By the time it expired, Parsons will be making big money and we'd never get cap space again. Dragic is better than Lin but I don't think he's so much better that I'd want to skip the 2015 free agent market.

 

I agree they haven't prevented anything yet - but that will change this off-season if they are still on the payroll.

I also may be in the minority here, but I don't get how people think owners don't care about how much they are paying their employees. Do you think these people have unlimited money, or that they got to where they are by frivolously spending money on their highest paid employees? I guarantee that almost every owner cares immensely about the amount they are paying each of the top 5-6 contracts on their roster. The difference of 7 million dollars (cap hit vs. actual pay-out) is literally a new business with operating capital for a year. Watch Mark Cuban on Shark Tank sometime if you think these guys somehow fell in to money or don't care how their money is now spent.

 

all these bad contract stuff are crap

 

Point 1, I agree. These contracts look like they'll put a pinch on our ability to improve the roster this summer. And, Asik's contract structure already prevented us from doing a deal this December. On the flipside, we got such enormous benefit already from signing him in the first place that I have a hard time calling it a bad contract. Being constrained now is the price to pay for a successful 2012-13 season and a successful pursuit of Dwight Howard. That's still worth it. Maybe the difference is that bad contracts are ones you regret signing, and Asik's contract (if not Lin's) is one I still can't regret.

Point 2, it's not that I don't think owners care about the cash, it's that I think they are or should be willing to pay high prices in cash for small benefits in competitiveness. This is a league that gives outsized benefits to winners (by attracting players so you can win more, by giving owners soft benefits like bragging rights, and by attracting revenues from fans who flock to winners and ignore losers), so spending several million extra to facilitate a deal that can make you better is a defensible decision.

 

These are not bad contracts, in fact they were great contracts. Houston designed them to ensure that these players were acquired so it had served the purpose. Apart from Asik sulking this year and understandably so. Lin and Asik had been great to the team.

 

I'm totally fine with shipping them both out for something that helps us, but at the same time its hard getting equal if not better worth out there because of the contracts. Both have contributed a lot last season, and Jeremy has shown improvements for a developing guard whos contributed a lot for the Rockets to make third seed.

 

Of course anything that helps the team is totally fine by most fans. If Harden or/and Dwight goes and makes the team better hell it is OK too. Very good to know many people like you appreciates what Asik and Lin had done for the team.

The fact that Asik/Lin are almost untradeable doesn't automatically make their contracts bad. A contract is way more than the tradability of the player.

 

You have no disagreement with me on the idea that they should be willing to pay high prices for competitiveness, but I don't believe that most of them are willing to do so. I bet a lot of GMs would break the bank if their owner allowed them to - like Dolan and Prokhorov - but most of the owners still view their team as a business with a budget for labor (aka the salary cap). This may be because teams like the Knicks and Nets have not had success even while spending exorbitant amounts of money.

Much of the problem comes from revenue-sharing in my opinion. If the Rockets were able to fully capitalize on Jeremy Lin's marketability and receive all of the revenue he generates, we would be able to spend a lot more money and offset the costs. The fact that a team like the Bucks can capitalize on Jeremy Lin's appeal while never having to invest an iota of time or money in the kid is ludicrous in my opinion. This opens a much larger can of worms, but I think that is the crux of the issue with revenue-sharing in the NBA.

If this was the case, Jeremy would also be worth a lot more than 8.3 million on the open market to any given team (aka he would be more than trade-able given his current salary). Of course, you wouldn't be able to prop up horrible franchises like the Bucks and Bobkitties either, so the league's talent would be more concentrated and better overall. It's a trade-off, and one I would like, but there are probably a lot of people who would be angry and pissed that it's not "fair" and what not... Well, is it fair that the Knicks receive money for Jeremy Lin's jersey sales when they basically cast him away? Is it fair that a "large market" team has to outperform the league's revenue average by 130% in order to not be penalized, while the "small market" team only has to put up 70% of the average revenue in order to receive full revenue-sharing?

 

Yeah, but if you read the rest of the article most of these are completely wasted money. Perkins, Amare, Josh Smith. No way that Asik and Lin rank with those contracts. They're contributing players on a winning Western Conference team.

 

I think of Lin as a single (arguably a double), and Asik as a double.

The problem is that their contracts are not liquid, due to the deliberate structure of the CBA. The Rockets can't just auction the contracts off; they have to take a matching contract, and such a deal is difficult to construct.

 

Lin is NOT the only player in the league who can put up better numbers in a different situation. All this stuff about him not being optimally utilized is getting old..

 

IMO, let us set a floor for Lin and say could do 15/8 on an average team or better. Whether he can do more, is a matter of "proving by doing", and LOF/LOH/LOFH may speculate endlessly, but requires a reality test. Which he won't receive the opportunity to in Houston.