Bo Outlaw in the past has said that he doesn't want to play for the Rockets, which is fine by me. I think the guy is overpaid an overrated, and I don't see the appeal in him. He would be a nice addition, but I don't think he's nearly as good as people think. I don't like this trade for the Suns either, but I just have a hard time believing there isn't more to it. I wonder if they have immediate/long term plans that required them to make this move. The Suns move was strictly for cap space. Teams are rushing to get under the cap, even the Rockets trading for Rice was for cap space, they just made the perfect deal that allowed them to stay under the luxury tax while signing Jimmy Jackson. The Suns got considerably worse. It's funny, I was on the Suns board and they said that WE didn't have any depth up front other then Yao. Boy are they completely confused on that one. Cato is one of the best back-up big men in the league, and Amaechi, Griffin and Mo are more then capable of dealing with the PF spot. The Suns are the one with no depth up front. Amare is their only big man, and that will come back to bite them in a major way as the season goes along.
RM - Are you confusing LTax with salary cap? Your statement is incorrect. Neither the Rice or Knight move had anything to do with cap space. The Rockets did not go under the cap with the Rice/Amaechi swap. The Rockets had about a $54m payroll. Subtract Rice's $9.6m and add back Amaechi's $2.6m and your still above the cap. As for PHX (assuming Penny takes his $14m POpt), they currently have $63m for 03-04 and $46.7m committed for 2004-05 after Knight expires next summer. The current cap is about $43m. BRI would have to rise substantially for the 04-05 cap to go above $47m.
The Grizzlies have no fear of payroll. Posey, Outlaw, J Williams, Dickerson, Wright and Person each making $5 to $7 million. Gasol and Miller are still under rookie contracts The right honourable Mr. West sure has his work cut out for him!
Gater You are probably onto something. Jake just seems to be a lane clogger, something there isn't a stat for. I always wondered why Phoenix would start him, but only play him for 10-15 mins the whole game. Perhaps there is more to big Jake than we both know. Wright would be a heck of a backup 4/5 for them. It seems West has something big up his sleeve. Regardless, us Rocket fans better not be too focused on the teams that are ahead of us, and forget about the much improved Memphis Grizzlies and Denver Nuggets, who talent wise, can compete with just about anyone in the NBA. Midwest Division = toughest division in all of basketball right now.
That trade has salary cap written all over it. Plus Jake wasnt quite the center they envisioned. Remember he missed almost half the season last year, and played ZERO during the Suns V Spurs playoff series...a series that could have very well gone to a game 7 had Malik Rose not injured Marbury in game 3 or 4. Even with Marbury's shoulder injury, the Suns still took them 6 games....which is just as much (or more) than anyone else did. IMO, Jake was a 3 year project and he showed nothing as time progressed. Like someone else mentioned, with Gugliotta's contract expiring next season, they will have 8-9 million dollars off the books...along with Brevin Knights contract set to expire after this season as well. I might be off my a million or 2, but that give the Suns between 12-14 million to play with in free agency next off-season. Someone please correct me if I am wrong.
The Suns didn't lose anything. Bo Outlaw wasn't going to see playing time and Big Jake neither. Zarko alone will make up for all of Outlaw's minutes. Than you have young Jake Voshkul who proved to be much better than Tsakalidis last season who will see more time just like Amare will. Googs is 100% healthy and looks good so far so that will easily eat up all the minutes. Knight is a servicable backup with an expiring contract. He will be able to run the backup PG solid when Marbury is on the bench and Barbosa won't be ready to run the team well right away. Knight can push the ball, rack up assists and steals and those are good qualities on an athletic team like the Suns. Big Jake was a complete dissapointment last year and hardly ever contributed anything.
Phoenix will get rid off roughly 17M$ next offseason with Googs and Knights contract expiring. Googs is making almost 12M$ this season, Knight 5M$.
will do. yeah they lose 14 or 17M (whatever it is) but they are about 17M over the cap per GATER's last post and thus will be right at the cap in a best case scenario and over it most likely. they'd have to lose another 15M or so to be big players. i don't see that happening. nothing to fear.
My mistake GATER, I meant to say LUXURY tax, not cap space, you're right. The luxury tax is the reason that Brevin Knight might not be a Sun for much longer. You're right about the cap space thing.
The Suns didn't lose anything. Bo Outlaw wasn't going to see playing time and Big Jake neither. Zarko alone will make up for all of Outlaw's minutes. Than you have young Jake Voshkul who proved to be much better than Tsakalidis last season who will see more time just like Amare will. Googs is 100% healthy and looks good so far so that will easily eat up all the minutes. Knight is a servicable backup with an expiring contract. He will be able to run the backup PG solid when Marbury is on the bench and Barbosa won't be ready to run the team well right away. Knight can push the ball, rack up assists and steals and those are good qualities on an athletic team like the Suns. Big Jake was a complete dissapointment last year and hardly ever contributed anything. There's no way you can say that a team lacking depth in the middle, giving up their starting center is "losing nothing". Not only did they give up a 7-footer, they gave up depth up front. Gugliota will be healthy, that's nice, but he can't play center. The Suns are basically the same team, actually thinner up front, or at least smaller, while everyone but Portland improved. That doesn't mean the Suns won't make it to the playoffs. But Memphis is greatly improved and might make a run. I still think the Suns got worse after that deal. Their backcourt wasn't the problem, the frontcourt was, and the Suns just got thinner and smaller up front. Why did Bo Outlaw say he didn't want to play for Houston? He never exactly said SLA. He has blown off the Rockets several times in statements he made. He has had a chance to sign with the Rockets and didn't have any interest, and I remember before he was traded to Phoenix someone asked him about the Rockets, who had interest in him, and he completely blew us off and essentially said he didn't want to play for the Rockets. That's fine by me.
Tsakalidis wasn't the Suns starting center. He was used every once in a while but had almost 0 impact at all. Most of that negative. He didn't even play in the playoffs. He is NO loss. And Zarko will be a big improvement over Outlaw. Zarko is 7' and Googs is 6'10.
I'll believe Gugliotta is going to have a full healthy season when I see that. I'm betting that him being healthy is alot like when Grant Hill is healthy.
