How can signing anybody not cost you salary cap space? He wanted about 6 million a year. That probably would have put us over the cap.
you pointed out someone's 1 million dollar offer to say we paid him way too much and said he was a journeyman and thus signed him to too many years. jj is giving us more production than his contract but you're complaining that CD should have haggled him down a million or something. i'm actually glad we have him for 3 years b/c we don't have to worry about losing him or possibly getting a better offer after playing well (though for some reason he never does). plus, the contract doesn't preclude us from any other moves and if we were to bring in something it wouldn't be too much for a backup. i love what we signed him for and that it was 3 years and not 1.
You should read through the series of posts again. I said we couldve signed him in lieu of Piatkowski. Someone said we couldnt because JJ was waiting on some mega deal from a contender. That was complete BS. We signed Piatkowski on 7/27. As early as 8/1, the Minnesota Star Tribune had reported the Wolves' interest in Jackson but only at 1 million possibly 1.5. The only other report I saw was Sacramento who was interested in resigning JJ but was limited due to salary cap restrictions. So any claim that JJ was pondering multitude of offers from a series of contending teams is bunk. 2001-2002 $789,170 1 year contract 2002-2003 $791,341 1 year contract So you think if the Rockets offered JJ a 3 year $7.5 million contract on an up and coming team in late July, he wouldve turned that down? BS. Sorry if that offends the cheerleaders.
Dear RIET I said 'IMO, JJax would not have signed for what he did when Pike was signed. It took more time for JJax to realize the big payday was not there, that he needed to find the right team with the best deal. '. Yes, I believe Jimmy Jix still held out hope that 'the call' would come, and was prepared to start the season on the sidelines waiting for 'an injury', or somesuch. Rox stepped forth and it has been a good deal for both, IMO. Why are you so OTT on this? Signed 'Someone'
How am I offtopic on this? In my opinion, CD is a very mediocre, if not downright bad GM yet people continually make excuses for him. Forget the Eddie Griffin fiasco, the Rashard Lewis fiasco, the Moochie Norris contract, the Glen Rice contract, the Kelvin Cato contract, picking Bostjian Nachbar, trading away our 1st round draft choices to cover up previous bad contracts, etc etc etc....... Let's blame everything on Rudy and pretend CD had no input on personnel or on contract terms. The Eric Piatkowski/Voshon Leonard situation is a perfect example. Both 1 dimensional 2nd/3rd tier free agents. Denver (having learned from their mistakes) signs Leonard to a 1 year contract making him earn his pay. We (having not learned our lesson) give Piatkowski, an exact duplicate player, a 3 year deal. We then sign Jim Jackson later and say we COULD NOT have done it without making the Utah trade. Well sure, if you ignore the earlier facts.
RIET is spot on, as usual. CD consistently overpays, for too long. He is the bleeding tuna in the agent shark tank.
besides making the trade for franchise, picking up drexler, and getting lucky with yao,,,,there is not much CD has done esp on draft day....the now bust EG, bryce drew. brent price (i know not on draft day) ..forgot the year but we had three first round draft picks and they all sucked and one never played for us..not many bright spots
Wasn't that in '98 when they took Dickerson, Drew, and Turscan? Dickerson had a damn fine rookie year and was the key player in the Francis trade. I'll agree Drew and Turscan were wasted picks, especially considering they passed up Rashard Lewis twice in the process. Although one other bright spot was Mobley taken #41 in the second round. Look, I've been very critical of CD and Rudy's personnel moves over the last 5-6 years. I'm certain that had just as much to do with Rudy getting fired....errrrr, stepping down due to health reasons as his subpar coaching performance. But not all of their decisions have been bad ones. What I am happy to see is that the days of blindly handing out 6 or 7 year contracts seem to be over. Believe me, I'd much rather be sitting here b****ing about Jimmy Jackson and Eric Piatkowski making 2 mil a year for 3 years than the money Cato, Taylor and Moochie were pulling down. And losing Posey hurt(especially to a division rival), but there's no way he was worth 6.5 mil a season. I'm hoping CD has learned his lesson and will do his homework before signing mediocre free agents to superstar level deals. Unless Francis or Yao play so poorly that it requires the Rockets to blow up the team and start from scratch, 2006 is gonna be a big offseason for the franchise. Hopefully, the organization will use that massive amount of cap money wisely this time.
Desert Scar, please tell me, what were the chances of us resigning KT? Fact is, neither player were likely to resign with us. Nothing ventured nothing gained. We really didn't lose anything.
Michael Dickerson did not suck. He was actually very good and was instrumental in the Francis deal. What I see now is similiar to the end of the Ray Patterson era. He was just going through the motions. After Ray left, we were lucky enough to get his son. At first glance it was pure nepotism. However, he made a series of bold manuevers. He challenged Hakeem, bought Vernon Maxwell, traded for Kenny Smith and Otis Thorpe, and drafted Robert Horry. Obviously Rudy had strong input in the personnel decisions. However, I remember it was Steve Patterson who was in front of the cameras defending the Horry pick, receiving the criticism. When asked why he passed on Harold Minor, Patterson looked at the camera and said: "Im not drafting a PG who averages 1 assist per game in college". I remember people in Houston were really pissed and Miami had the smuggest look on their face like Santa just delivered them a huge present. Les fired Steve Patterson because he couldnt sell out the Summit. You used to be able to clip a 2 for 1 coupon out of the Houston Chronicle (2 tickets for $12). Years later Les admitted that had he to do over again, he wouldnt have fired Patterson. This is slightly off topic but I would love to see someone with the absolute no nonsense demeanor of a Steve Patterson. If he didnt feel he was getting maxmimum output, he challenged the players, including the superstar. He built that 93-94 championship team.
Sean gave him the A-, Stephen gave him the I grade. I cannot agree with A-, as although we hired JVG and got a needed defensive boost, we are still about as far from a championship drive as ever. I have to go with C, and that's assuming we get at least *something* back with our exemption. I once again have to agree with my DS/RIET brethren on the JP issue, as we did on the original thread months ago. It was fairly obvious that his 3pt accuracy was on the upward move at the end of last year, and he was really fitting in. This year's shooting should be a surprise to no one. JJ does have a bit more savvy out there on the court than JP at this particular moment, but it does put a damper on things to realize that he's just one more piece of the puzzle we're going to have to replace in the next couple of years. There's too many puzzle pieces we are going to need in order to contend, and we don't have alot of bargaining chips any more. My understanding is that we could have had JJ and JP. That would have been a solid offseason, worthy of a B+, even if no capable backup PG was found. Both are complete role players with 3-point shooting that had been on the upswing, which is what we needed. Pike I can understand, even if I didn't agree with it. But AG? Please. I also find it hard to believe EG had zero trade value. He at least could have been a throw-in. I'm glad the punk is off the team, but given the warning signals, I find it hard to say that an "A-" GM does not anticipate and get something good in return.
RIET, you seem to be complaining that we sign mediocre players for too long, and you do have a point, with a history of Cato/Moochie/white point guards. However, you go on to complain that we didn't keep KT and Posey. You can't have it both ways man. A KT signing would have been exactly the type of deal you are complaining about, as he is not anywhere near the defender we need at the 4, and neither does he have the shooting touch. Oh, and did I mention he is 6'7? Sounds like a good 3, except he can't shoot the 3-ball at all. By the way, I checked Kenny's stats and his rpg went up by 1.5 as soon as he switched to playing for the 76ers in the east. Don't be misled into thinking that he would be near 10 rpg in the west. Posey also looked like a bad risk at the time. Signing him would have put us near luxury tax level, and on a team that has Yao, you can't be giving out long-term contracts to bad shooters. Out of his three seasons in the NBA, Posey had shot the 3-ball well about 40 games. We couldn't take that kind of risk. I give CD an incomplete as well. He has the difficult job of changing a team that was designed to beat defences by playing one-on-one to a team that has a passing game that can beat zone defences that smother your best player before he even gets the ball. I realize that a lot rides on how he uses the trade exception, but hell, at least he got rid of Moochie.
There's no way CD deserves any grade other than "F" for his absolute incompetence as a GM. First and foremost, there's the EG fiasco where he simply trashcans 3 1st round draft picks for a guy who'd played barely a year of college ball. Next he compounds his error by trading away Kenny Thomas who was the only PF on this team that bothered to showed up to play night in and night out - in effect betting the farm on EG who is now out of basketball. He further cements his stupidity by not making the deal that would have rid us of EG in return for Rashard Lewis. And that's 3 F'ups for just one player. I won't even go into the bad contracts for Mo Taylor, Cato, Norris (for which we traded to NY for another bad contract in Witherspoon) & Piatowski. This is a prime reason why the Rockets bench is loaded with players picked off the end of other teams benches or from the NBA dumpsters. It's also the major reason why Posey is now playing in Memphis and KT is in Philly. Nor will I go into his abysmal draft record for the past few years (Yao's draft doesn't count - that was a no brainer based upon luck). Last year we even had the opportunity of landing into the NBA lottery and sitting at home watching Memphis use our lotto pick. In any other area, a performance such as this would get your a** canned but not with the Rockets where incompetence is not only accepted it's rewarded with a contract extension.
I have not complained about Kenny Thomas. I thought he was a good player but not worth what Philadelphia paid him. As far as Posey, I believe : 1. He would've accepted less to stay in Houston (He loved it here) 2. He couldve been signed for the same amount for the combination of JJ & Piatkowski. Since Piatkowski has been a bust it's a JJ/Posey comparison. In my opinion, so far it's been a wash but Id take my chances on a 27 year old for 4 years than a 33 year old for 3 years.
Because we were already over the cap, and will likely be over the next 4 years to which Posey's contract would have applied. Thus signing Posey or not, we have the MLE to play around with. Thus theoretically, we could have signed Posey, JJ, Pike, & A Griffin of course we should have signed Posey (long term roll player) and JJ (best older vet of the other 3) KT in all likelihood never gets a contract offer like he did from Phily except that he was acquired via trade. We would have in all probably faced a similar situation as we did with Posey, 4 years, 22.6 mil or 5 years like 29 mil max. And again, we could have matched without losing our MLE and no matching him gets you no closer to realistic cap space significantly under what you can offer anyway with an MLE. IN SUMMARY: So last offseason we could have had KT or Posey (take your pick) plus JJ plus Pike plus AG if you really wanted. Instead we lost both KT and Posey--the only players among this group with upside and long term potential, and a 1st round pick to boot, to acquire 3 older players with 2-3 year contributions at the max.
I should add as illogical as it was from a long term, team building perspective, and though it did not help us get any cap space by losing KT and JP--these moves have probably made Les some short term money. Thus it wasn't that our GM is just plain stupid, just that our franchise is dollar greedy instead of winning greedy.
There is the chance that completely rebuilding a team, and suffering only one legitimate losing season in the process (another due to injury), actually does deserve an 'A'.
We've been rebuilding for at least 4 years now. They were treading water until Yao showed up. CD has done a 'B' job the last couple of years, I think. Rudy's love affair with big men that can shoot 3s was killing the roster moves. I honestly feel his removal from decisions has helped tremendously. This summer will be something to see as far as Rocket moves. Evan
