Anyone care to post this? http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/stor...=nba-how-houston-used-loopholes-woo-omer-asik I apologize in advance if its against forum rules; delete if necessary.
What stops Chicago from exacting revenge on us in this exact same way with Courtney Lee's offer sheet?
1. They can do the exact same thing but why would they? They'd find themselves in the same predicament if they were to match Asik's contract. 2. We have Martin and Lamb on the roster. If they do that for Lee, we still have two SGs that are/can be starters.
They don't have the money to spend. Most they can offer is $5M starting salary and that subjects them to a hard cap ($74.3M, signing Lee would bring their total salary up to $69.8M), limiting their ability even to bring back their own players. Courtney Lee is also not an Arenas Rule free agent, so you can't back-load his contract like that. If CHI offers the most that it is allowed to offer-- 4 years, $22M-- the Rockets can just match it no problem since it will just have the normal salary structure with the normal 4.5% increase. No weird backloading poison pill salary. Also, that amount won't really hurt the Rockets flexibility for this offseason.
Well it wouldn't be exactly the same because the cap hit would only be 8 mil/year for the final year instead of 15.
We are not cap strained like they are, lol that could prompt Maury to drive the truck in with the Asik deal then make them suffer again by driving it in reverse by letting the Bulls keep Lee.
Maybe Nike, Alleot, Carl or Bimma can help with this but I think the Rockets have Lee's full bird rights. He is a first round pick coming off a 4 year contract. Which I think means that the Gilbert Arenas rule does not apply here.
why call DM a genius? any GM could do what he did. the only question is whether the player is worth such a contract. I can see DM trying to unload Asik when the time of his 3rd year comes along. It's his modus operandi. The other thing he does is put performance guarantees on the last year of the contract.
In the current collective bargaining agreement, it's known as the Gilbert Arenas rule. In the next CBA, it might be known as the Daryl Morey rule, because the Houston Rockets GM just drove a Mack truck through every one of the provision's current loopholes in agreeing to a three-year, $24.3 million offer sheet with restricted free agent Omer Asik, formerly of the Chicago Bulls. Let's set aside whether Asik is actually worth $24 million over three years for a moment -- we'll tackle that later -- and just ponder the evil genius of the structuring of the contract and how it gives the Rockets a huge advantage in prying him away from the Bulls. Under the "Gilbert Arenas" provision of the league's collective bargaining agreement, a player such as Asik -- a second-round draft pick coming off his second season -- can be offered only a maximum of the midlevel exception in free agency for the first two seasons but can be offered any amount up to the maximum in years after that. Houston took advantage of this provision by limiting his offer to three years, rather than the maximum of four, and offering the maximum eligible salary in Year 3. It's so damaging because of how the league assigns the salary cap and luxury tax hits for the respective sides. In Houston's case, the amounts are averaged over the three seasons, requiring the Rockets to have a little more than $8 million in cap room to consummate the deal. No biggie for Houston; they would happen to have exactly $8 million lying around if they renounce their rights to Marcus Camby, cut Shaun Livingston, Greg Smith, Courtney Fortson and Diamon Simpson, and either waive Jon Leuer or use the stretch provision on Jon Brockman. Houston could also get there by renouncing its rights to restricted free agent Courtney Lee, but that seems more unlikely. And looking ahead, the Rockets are still in pristine shape going forward. An $8 million cap charge for Asik in 2013-14 and 2014-15 simply isn't going to hurt them. But Chicago? Holy hell, this is going to hurt. The league calculates the cap charge differently for a team matching the offer sheet, using actual salaries instead of the average. So the Bulls get off easy in the short term; a $5 million cap charge for Asik this year and next should have been in their budget to start. But then in 2014-15, it jumps up to about $14.1 million. And it's not clear how the Bulls are supposed to handle that, especially given their aversion to the luxury tax and the fact they may be subject to the repeater penalty by then. Between Asik, Derrick Rose, Carlos Boozer and Joakim Noah, they have $61.6 million committed and that's without paying Taj Gibson, retaining Luol Deng, or adding any free agent or draft picks. They're almost certainly a tax team, in other words, and in fact they're likely to be deep into the tax, even if the league's tax level rises a few ducats by then. Which makes the effective cost of keeping Asik that season closer to $30 million than $15 million. And as much as I may admire his defense and rebounding, it's inconceivable that Asik is worth anywhere near $30 million. Are there ways around this? Yes, but the medicine is worse than the disease. If in 2014 the Bulls were to use the amnesty clause on Carlos Boozer, who would be on the final year of his deal, that would cut $15 million from their cap number (and likely from their luxury tax bill) that season, but they would still have to pay Boozer, which would still make Asik's effective cost $30 million -- except in that case, it's $30 million and a starting power forward. Alternatively, Chicago could use the stretch provision on Asik prior to Year 3. That would cost them $5 million each in 2014-15, 2015-16, and 2016-17, possibly saving them from a luxury tax in all three seasons. But doing so would give them only two years of Asik, while still paying the entirety of the deal, which means they'll have signed him to a two-year deal for $24 million. Which is about as bad as the effective cost of three years, $39 million that we're presenting as the alternative. (You can also count the tax hits in Years 1 and 2, but they're the same in both alternatives so we'll ignore them for now.) Basically, there's no easy way out for Chicago, which is why they're unlikely to match Houston's offer sheet. They still have Gibson, who is an absolute defensive beast and is extension-eligible this summer -- presumably on far better terms than Asik's deal. Meanwhile, Chicago can shorten its frontcourt rotation to three men -- Boozer, Noah and Gibson -- while using Luol Deng as a small-ball 4 in stretches. Thus, in all likelihood, Houston is going to end up with Asik. I have to admire their cleverness in pulling this off, but I also have to shake my head that this was allowed under the CBA. When they get around to the next one, maybe they'll realize that it's unfair to count the tax and cap hit in the season it hits for the matching team, while allowing the offering team to offer only one season at the higher level. Houston drove a truck through this loophole, but in the future requiring four-year deals for Arenas contracts will at least require teams to offer a more genuine maximum deal. Doing so in this case would have made it a four-year, $39 million deal from the Rockets, required nearly $10 million in cap space (and requisite harder decisions from the Rockets), and likely pushed them to a different alternative. So congratulations, Houston -- it looks like Chef Linguini is likely all yours. On to the next question: Is he worth it? That's a bit of an eye-of-the-beholder question. Asik's advanced stats support the subjective viewpoint that he's one of the five or 10 best defensive players in basketball, and defense in general tends to be wildly underrated in the free-agent market (although weirdly, not in the draft). He is also, objectively, a monstrous rebounder, with his 20.1 rebound rate ranking sixth in the NBA last season. Asik is a terrible offensive player, however, with bad hands, poor touch and a proclivity for illegal screens. Advanced stats seem to indicate that he takes away almost as much with his offense as he does with his defense -- but that overall he's a plus, even compared to the league average. And that, in the big picture, makes him a second-tier starting center. And you know how much those are worth? About $8 million a year. Houston should know; they just paid nearly the same amount to the departed Samuel Dalembert. Houston will hope Asik can improve on that prognosis by upping his offensive production to slightly less pathetic levels, with the tutelage of Kevin McHale, but even so his defense justifies the contract. It also helps that Houston gets somebody under lock and key before re-signing its own free agents. The cap holds for Lee and Goran Dragic are low enough that it behooves the Rockets to use the cap space first, and then rebuild their backcourt. From there, Houston can go in any number of directions, depending on Dwight Howard's availability and the market for Kyle Lowry. But first they took care of the most urgent need; if the Bulls don't match, the Rockets will have a real starting center this year, and they won't be overpaying for him.
^^^There you go guys the article in full, enjoy..... Seems like this could cripple the bulls whilst giving us a chip in the future should he not pan out haha very sneaky Morey
Correct. The rule applies to 2nd round picks that haven't yet reached full bird rights. If there ever will be a case of a 1st round pick similar to that of Asik under the current CBA. The team would've declined the third year team option of said players contract. Making them eligible for bird rights. In this instance, the team probably isn't trying to keep its player. Luckily, Morey structured Parsons contract in a way that he is legible for full bird rights as a 2nd rounder. Not some 2 year 'afraid of commitment' contract the Bulls gave Asik.
Really? Because this is the first time it's ever been done. There's absolutely no way to know if anyone would ever have done it except Morey. He has pioneered this particular "manoeuvre"
