While you can say that in all likely hood we would have been able to move Rice for a player we wanted the fact is that we will never know. Restrictive? I think it is very flexabile! We have it LONGER than what Rice's expiring contract would have been PLUS we can break it up. If anything it is LESS restrictive! I am not disputing that at the TIME of the Rice trade the team was looking to cut some salary with the LT looming. But they left themselves an out via the TE. I think more than anything Les doesnt want to pay the LT. So it is not so much cutting of payroll as much as not wanting to pay dollar for dollar over the LT while the team is barely in a position to make the playoffs. I think he will spend the money, only if it takes us to the next level. Moreover, with the LT coming to an end more than likely I think it opens up more options for us. I will be the first to admit it was a hideous trade if we dont use the TE. However, Crash, if we do parlay it into a player such as a Rasheed Wallace or something, I hope you are the first to stand up and admit you were too harsh on condeming the TE trade.
Do you really think Less is going to allow CD to use the trade exception? I don't. Rices contract was going to expire at the end of the season anyway and could have been used by the trade dead line to add a good veteran but instead picks were traded to get rid of an expiring contract. That tells me that Less wants to lower his pay roll now regardless of improving the team. Face it, the trade exception is prohibitive and adds salary with out taking any away. Not exactly what Donald Sterling....I mean Less Alaxander seems to be doing right now.
You are right we will never know. All we know is that what Terrell Brandon’s expiring contract was worth which btw, was almost the exact amount as Glen Rice’s expiring contract. But like you said since Les was not willing to try we will never know. Plus we can not use it in conjunction with another player in a trade which means that the player we add is going to be a 6.9 million dollar man or less. To me that is very restrictive. Plus it adds salary with out taking any away. Once again makes it very unattractive to an owner like Less that is trying to keep a team under a certain salary figure. Duece, It’s a deal. If the trade exception is parlayed into a Rasheed Wallace type of player I will admit I was way, way too harsh. I know you will remind me Really if that happens it will prove that I was completely wrong on all of this and I will admit it…happily.
Should Les Alexander have thrown money at Posey? I for one am damned glad he didn't. Should Les Alexander have gotten into a bidding war with Detroit over Larry Brown? That's what I wanted. Now I'm glad he didn't. Did he want to pay an LTax because he had to pay Glen Rice the obscence amount of $9.5m. No. And I'm glad of that. Because the end result was Jackson. The question no critic of the Rice/Amaechi trade has yet been able to answer. If Rice's expiring contract was so valuable, why didn't Utah turn it anything valuable? Clearly, Utah is not at the top of every FA's wish list so getting players already under contract had huge advantages for them. If you want to feel the the trade exception won't be used. Fine. I do. And all of the rational and irrational opinions expressed on this board aren't likely to change either of our minds. But unlike the major dreamcasts, the Yao only / Yao bashing, trade Cuttino, Steve to the 2, why don't we sign so and so, Van Gundy sucks / Van Gundy is great, Houston Knicks, Rudy walks on water / Rudy sux, and Dream could coach Yao better than Ewing threads that appear here as daily speculation...the Trade Exception is entirely different. It is black and white. It will or will not get used. And it does not expire until October 2004. I've got that much patience.
I do think they will look into using it. I guess we will find out this summer. I am not TOTALLY convince Les is dead set against taking on salary. I AM convinced he does not want to go above the LT threshold. With the LT going away, I think you will see a change.
Then why not just let Rices contract expire? Answer, because they are not finished building. They could have let his contract expire and saved more money, not to mention the posibility of winning the real lotery by actually picking a winner in the draft. I am not saying that you are wrong about Les and CD's intentions in aquiring the TE, but if you are correct this team is doomed to mediocrity by two of the worst team leaders on the NBA. I hope you are wrong.
The Utah Jazz have a salary of 28 million dollars right now with 7 players coming off the books this summer. I think its safe to assume that a lot of free agents did not sign with Utah because Stockton and Malone were both retiring and the Jazz looked to be very very bad for a long time. I don’t think anyone expected them to be as good as they have been this year and with AK47, Raul Lopez and Matt Harpring all on the team they look to be good for a long time. Now with the type of money that they can offer a free agent plus a chance to compete for a title they could be a very attractive team for a free agent. At any rate I bet the Jazz are not as convinced that they can’t sign a top notch free agent as you are. Do not keep claiming that trading Rice allowed us to sign Jackson because the two deals were completely independent of each other. Less could have signed Jackson regardless of the Cap because he had the mid level exception, he was just not willing to. To me this is more evidence that Less has put saving a buck over winning and not some kind of justification for trading Rice and a bunch of draft picks for crap. And individually most of the deals (certainly not the Rice deal) can be justified but when in this case the you have to look at the whole picture. Not one single move has been done IMO with the intent to make the team better, they have all been done to get the team below a cap number. Just my opinion and as I agreed to do with Duece I will admit the error in my logic if Less proves me wrong but as of yet he has not. Will you admit that Less has turned into Donald Sterling East if he does not use the exception and continues to make salary cap based moves that don’t improve the team?
1. There is in fact a difference in Brandon's contract and Rice's. Brandon is no longer playing due to injury- because of the CBA, by the end of the year, Brandon's salary slot (~11 mill, iirc) will not be counted on the Hawk's cap for this season, getting them out of lux. tax pressure. While Rice's contract expires, it counts on the cap this year. Brandon was essentially an empty expiring contract from the year BEFORE. 2. As GATER, myself, and aelliott concluded, that Feigen article about the exception was wrong. You mentioned Rice being useful for a deadline deal- the exception is MUCH more flexible. We can use as much or as little of the exception, split it between deals. Perhaps as importantly, come free agency time, we would've let Rice go, and that would've been the end. We will have use of the exception in free agency to use as part of a potential sign and trade. Who knows? I think Les will do what it takes to win. Since we basically cut off Rice's 9 mill of salary this year, Les may be willing to spend it next year (through use of the trade exception) when it appears there won't be any worries of paying the $ for $ luxury tax.
No it's not a 1 in 15 million shot...and analogies are never intended to be taken literally. The point was that the trade exception gave us a better opportunity than what our draft pick did. Saying that all of those guys that you mentioned will be border line all-stars or better is a stretch. The only guys on that list that are All-Star candidates now or in the next several years are AK47, Randolph and Redd. Here's the simplest way that I can lay it out for you. Which of these two scenarios do you think gives the Rockets the better chance at improving their team? 1) Keeping Rice and letting his contract expire and going into the offseason still capped out and with our own first round pick. or 2) Dumping Rice and picking up a trade exception, but losing our first round pick. We're not building for 5 years down the road anymore. We've got our core group here and we're missing some specific things. In my opinion we've got a lot better chance to fill those needs by using our exception to acquire a veteran player. Also, it's much eaiser to evaluate the perfomance of a veteran player that has already played in the league than it is to project that of a rookie. Keeping the draft pick and just hoping that a diamond in the rough falls into your lap is just a stretch and in our case it's even worse. Not only do we need for a really good player to fall to our pick, that player has to fill the sepecific needs of the Rockets. So, we get lucky and a Ginobli is there at our pick. Are we substantially better? Nope, he duplicates the skills we already have. Do we really want to wait 2 or 3 years hoping that a draft pick might develop? I'm guessing that if we did, alot of these same posters would be complaining about wasting a draft pick. There's no sure solution, no matter which way we go. We could have gone either route and it's possible that it would have worked out for the best. It's also possible that we could screw up either scenario. That being said, the trade exception still gives us more possibilities and each of those have a higher probability of success than a low draft pick. That was the point of the analogy.
Brandon is just an example but are you saying that you don't think that there are teams out there trying to cut salary for expiring contracts? Thats crap just look at what the Mav's seem to do every year...expiring crap for good players with big unwanted salaries. I guess time will tell if we can use the exception with another player but I have yet to see anything official to suggest that Feigan was wrong and if any of you have found something official then I have missed it. I would have much prefered letting Rice's contract expire and keep our one 1st and Chicago's two 2nd round picks than to send it to Utah for Ameachi and a trade exception that I will be shocked if we ever use.
One of the 1st round picks is a conditional 1st rounder from Chicago that will in all likely hood turn into two 2nd rounders. But like you said...stupid.
Are you saying the only we could have dumped Rice's contract was by trading away our 1st round pick? So not only is an expiring contract worthless, but it actually has negative value and you have to pay someone to take an expiring contract off your hands and get a worthless John Amaechi $2.7 million in return to boot. That's the best we could have done. Sure.
No, you are still missing the point. We could have traded Rice, but what we would have gotten in return wouldn't have been as valuable as the trade exception. Realistically, who were we going to get for Rice? I can't think of anybody that was going to significantly upgrade our team. They didn't do the deal with Utah just to get rid of Rice's contract. They did the deal with Utah to ge the trade exception. So, unless you're convinced that Rice was going to be traded for a Rasheed Wallace, Elton Brand or the like, then I'll ask again, which do you think gives us a better chance help the team: 1) Keeping Rice and letting his contract expire and going into the offseason still capped out and with our own first round pick. or 2) Dumping Rice and picking up a trade exception, but losing our first round pick. Hey, I'll even throw in a 3rd choice for you 3) Trading Rice for whatever we could get, going into the offseason still capped out and with our own first round pick. In my opinion it's still a no brainer that the trade exception by far gives us the best chance to add a player that will truley make a difference.
What players are you thinking of that would "truely" make a difference. Frm Feigen's list: But next summer, when free agents expecting to strike it rich are Want a physical big man? Carlos Boozer? Etan Thomas? With a little luck, Jamaal Magliore? Need a power forward with shooting range? Mehmet Okur? Hedo Turkoglu? How about a true small forward? Morris Peterson? Desmond Mason? Help in the backcourt? Brent Barry? Kenny Anderson? Maybe even Quentin Richardson? How many of those players were low first/second round draft choices? If you're saying the only high impact players (drafted 19 or lower)between 99-2002 are Kirilenko and Randolph, how would you classify the group above?
I respect your posts as much as anyone but I could not disagree more. How can you say trading Rice for who ever is not worth as much as the trade exception? What is Rice would have netted us SAR? Still think the trade exception would bring us that much? How much is a 6.9 million dollar trade exception going to bring us when we can't combine it with another player? What if the best offer Portland could get for Rasheed was Rice's expiring contract plus a 1st and 2nd round picks with out adding more salary? What if Portland did jumped on that because of they could get some picks with out adding salary? Might they pull a deal like this at the trading deadline? We will never know. Hey I don't know for sure what Rice would have brought but one thing for sure is that we will never know. And do you think that trading Rice and 3 picks for the trade exception is worth a damn if we don't use the trade exception? I don't. To me its a no brainer that could have dumped Rices contract at the end of the season...all 10 million of it. As it is we only dropped a portion of it since we took salary back that does not expire at the end of the season. Weatherspoon is the net of that trade and his contract runs through 06. So I guess in my mind we are still going to be capped out next year regardless of Rice's contract and the trade exception. But I think that Rice's 10 million dollar expiring contract could have netted a lot more at the trade deadline than a 6.9 million dollar trade exception could during the summer. Hell, I don't even think Less will allow CD to use the Trade Exception.
I think the more foolish move was doing a sign and trade of an inflated contract for Shandon Anderson for Rice, increasing our salary cap. But, now the issue is the trade with Utah. Actually, you have to look at other factors that give this value. From what many experts are saying, there is a high probability that we WILL pay the luxury tax THIS year, but not next year or the following. That makes this a fairly shrewd move. Follow my logic. (1) Paying the Dividend: When we go over the luxury tax limit, not only do we pay twice as much for the player's salary, but we lose the dividend, which is over 10 million. That's a lot of money. (2) Weak draft year, and out of the lottery: I believe this is a weak draft year. So, if there was a draft year to give a draft choice away in a deal, this is probably it. Consider that there is a high probability we'll go to the playoffs, and that we are in the Western Conference with better records, we will probably have a pick between 20-30. (3) The trade threat: The exception gives us the ability to trade players during the season, and hopefully affect the malaise which seems to inflict the Rocket players. (4) Obtain FA on next year's budget: This is the most valuable part of this deal. We will have this exception after the season, and the FA we sign will go on next year's budget, when we will probably NOT have the luxury tax. Since we were OVER the luxury tax ceiling when we made this trade, it brought us under the ceiling THIS year, and with some left over to obtain JJ and Pike. But this is the year we were worried about. At the same time, we can use the exception on next year's budget, and not pay the luxury tax. This was the pivotal purpose of this trade, IMHO. If we waited for Rice's contract to expire, we were going to have to pay the luxury tax this year, lose the dividend, be without JJ, Pike and Griffin, and then probably utilize him in a S&T this summer when his value was even lower. So, here's the bottom line: We traded (1) Rice his expiring contract, and his spot on the starting rotation ... if he lost his starting job, he could have become disruptive influence, (2) this year's low value draft pick, (3) the Chicago 2-2nd round picks in future years, because we'll never see that first rounder, (4) and some cash, for (1) John Ameachi, (2) a 2nd round pick from Utah in a rebuilding year, although it hasn't turned out so rebuilding, (3) getting under the salary cap THIS year, savings millions in salary matching (4) saving over 10 million in lost dividend, (5) the exception to use as a threat to trade players if they don't produce (6) the exception to use this summer to obtain a quality player in trade, along with Ameachi for fill in, incurring cost on next year's budget, when we aren't afraid of the luxury tax, (7) the ability to sign JJ, Pike and Griffin this year. I seriously doubt we'll use the exception until this summer, unless an incredible deal comes along for someone, like Rasheed Wallace (whether you agree with him or not, a deal). From a business and rebuilding standpoint, I think this is a good trade, from the position we were in last summer. Others may wish to be sure I'm accurate facts, but the concept is acurate, IMHO.
Thanks, you just made my point for me. The trade exception isn't used to sign free agents, it's used in trades. So, rather than being limited to a week FA group, we now have the ability to go after any player in the league. As far as players that would make a difference, how about a sign and trade for Rasheed Wallace? He's asking price for next season is said to start around $10M. A combination of a player and all/part of the trade exception for Wallace would make a huge difference. I don't want to get hung up on the pros and cons of Wallace, I'm just using him as an example. If you don't like Wallace, the trade exception still allows you tremendous flexibility in putting together a deal for any player that you do like. Heck, if you really want to dream, Garnett is a free agent next summer. I'm sure there's all kinds of sign and trade scenario's for Garnett that we can dream up. If you want to keep more of a base in reality, how about a sign and trade for Kurt Thomas, after he opts out of his deal next summer? As I said before, with the trade exception, any player is fair game. If you think that Mobley and the exception for Wallace is a good deal, then you can do it. If not, make up your own deal. Everyone seems to think that we were going to get a king's ransom for Rice, just because Atlanta traded Glenn Robinson for Brandon's contract. You do realize that Brandon's situation was completely different than Rice's? Brandon wasn't an expiring contract, he retired for medical reasons. Brandon was valuable to Atlanta because he came off the books this season (January), rather than after the season. This will be the last year of the luxury tax, so in subsequent years expiring contacts will have less value. Now days, the only way to get value is to take on huge long term money in exchange for the expiring contracts. The Knicks were able to get Marbury for expiring contracts, but they had to take on over $105M in committed salary to do that. We're never going to be in the situation to take on that kind of money, so we're rather limited in what we can get for expiring contracts. The trade exception was a move that gave us tremendous flexibility. You still haven't answered my question about what offers us the best chance to improve the team. I'm guessing the reason that you won't answer is because you know that the trade exception is more valuable than a first round pick and either Rice's cap space or whatever we could get for him. I'll make it easy for you. If you don't think that the trade exception is the most valuable to us, then tell us what is. Don't talk around it and not answer, give a concrete example. If you think that we should have traded Rice, then say that and let's hear an example of who you think that we should have gotten for him. If you think we should have let Rice's deal expire, then explain what we should have done.
I meant Player, not FA on my last point of my last post ... I hate not being able to edit my posts ...
Crash, if you dont think we will use the TE because you feel our owner is cheap then I totally respect your opinion on why you dont think so. However, enough with the statement of our TE can't be combined with another player. Let's end this right now! That is the ENTIRE reason we have it, so we CAN. We CAN combine it with a player. But it is my understanding we can only combine it with ONE player. So, we could combine the 6.9 TE with Mobley's contract to bring in a player making around 10 million dollars. It allows us to match players whose salaries are not close. That is nice leeway to have for trades. And you better believe other teams would love to involve us in a 3 way trades to make trades work during the offseason. Again more leeway. GATER, Aelliott, please re-post the info from the CBA that says we can do this. Didn't we already rebunk Feigan's article where he said we couldn't? How many times do we have to go over this??
