Steve is 20% of the payroll. I see a lot of posts saying how bad the team looks without Steve. I think any team without a guy who takes up 20% of the payroll along with Cato who makes 15% of the payroll sitting on the bench is going to look bad. 35% of the payroll effectively not playing is a BIG deal. You go to any office in America and slice off 1/3 of the personnel cost one way or another. Productivity will suffer greatly. If Steve gets traded which is more than likely going to happen with Van Gundy staying, SOMEONE actually comes back in the deal. It's not like they release him for nothing. If this guy was taking up 10% of the payroll, that would change things up. He is not. He is taking up 20% of the payroll. Just to compare to teams who actually win and go to the playoffs, Mike Bibby makes 15% of the Kings' payroll. Steve Nash makes 8% of the Mavs' payroll even though it will probably rise in percentage after this season. Bibby and Nash both outplay Steve head to head CONSISTENTLY. Anyone want to figure out why the Rockets lose to the Kings and Mavs almost all the time just has to look at those numbers. For the folks who are bashing Mark Jackson, he makes 1 percent of the payroll.
That's nice. But all that matters is the salary cap and the luxury tax. %'s don't make a difference. And you know Yao's is going to go way up when he gets off his rookie deal, and Steve's % is going to go down, most likely. Bibby and Nash? Well, yeah, don't the kings and Mav's have among the highest payrolls in the league? Of course their %'s are going to be lower.
Nash only makes $5,750,000/year. What a bargain. His next contract has to be bigger as he deserves it.
That's the exact reason he is leaving Dallas, I remember reading that his agent thought Nash deserved a max deal, I'm not sure where though.
First of all, I don't think payroll has anything to do with us losing against superior teams. They have a good nucleus of players and they play well together, that's why we lose to them, it has absolutlely nothing to do w/ payroll numbers. I haven't heard anyone bash MJ, but I would be pissed if I was paying a 37-year old PG, that can't shoot anymore, more than 1%. It is interesting that 15% of our payroll is going to Cato.
Houston Rockets Date # of total Player signed years salary misc FA Scott Padgett ......... 10/28/03 1 minimum '04 Mark Jackson .......... 1/15/04 1 minimum '04 Mike Wilks ............ 9/8/03 1 minimum '04 Adrian Griffin ........ 8/7/03 2 minimum '05 Cuttino Mobley ........ 10/2/00 6 $31 million p-opt '05 Kelvin Cato ........... 9/23/97,10/28/99 3+6 $3.4 mill+ 42 mill '06 Jim Jackson ........... 9/30/03 3 $7.3 million '06 Bostjan Nachbar ....... 7/11/02 4 $6,479,438 rc t-opt '06 Eric Piatkowski ....... 7/26/03 3 $9 million '06 Clarence Weatherspoon . 7/20/01 5 $27,228,000 '06 Yao Ming .............. 10/20/02 4 $18,037,586 rc t-opt '06 Maurice Taylor ........ 8/7/01 6 $48,750,000 '07 Steve Francis ......... 9/1/99,8/26/02 4+6 $14,124,582+$85mill p-opt '08
Looks like '06 is the year the Rockets can next make a run at a star FA. Cato, Jackson, Nachbar, Pike, and Weatherspoon all come off the books. How much money would we have? We could use some of that money to sign another star player and then use Yao's bird rights to sign him. It would have been even better if Taylor's contract was up that year.
When Yao makes big money, criticism will follow if he continues to play like he is playing now. However, he is not making that kind of money now. As far as your contention about the Kings and Mavs absolute payroll levels being higher, each team in the NBA is a separate entity. Les Alexander may be rich, but he isn't filthy rich like Mark Cuban or the Maloofs. If the Rockets are to compete against the big money spenders, they must make sure they are spending their dollars wisely. The JJ contract is a good one for example.
The original post was meant to illustrate that a whole lot of money is tied up in Steve's salary. If he doesn't play, it's like boxing with one arm.
Atleast 2 more years of the same core roster. 06' does look very good though. Patience is a virtue and sadly I'm running out of it. Gatorade! Now with more patience!
Yes, but for every "good" contract like Jim Jackson signs, since every team has to be at a minimum salary as well, they are necessarily going to have to sign another player to a 'bad', or larger contract just to get up to that number, If you want to criticize cap management, that's fine, but focusing on percentages like this is a red herring and pretty pointless.
06 is hardly a good year. The Rockets have about 24 million committed, they also happen to have only 2 players with contracts: one being MoT, who will be paid about 10 million (OUCH), the other being Steve, who gets about 14 million. Basically, assuming no roster changes, and that we don't have a 1st rounder the next two years, we'll be doing everything we can resigning players. Yao's contract also expires after 05 - 06 season, he'll be getting MAX. Cat's contract will also be expiring. Assuming we see him in our future plans, he'll be getting 2nd tier money (I guess about 9 million, in either case he wouldn't be happy being paid less than MoT). With what we have left we'll have to sign another 8 players just to have a 12 man roster. If we want to rebuild (which many here don't see to want), 06 is a great year. But if not, we're losing more than we gain.
Some calculations, assuming the cap in 06 is about the same as now (which is a pretty reasonable assumption), we're looking about 53 million, maybe up to 60. Steve gets 14, Mo 10, Yao about 10 - 12 I guess, Cat about 9 - 10. That's a total committed salary of 43 million tied in 4 players. We need to sign 8 players with 10 million. I seriously doubt we'll be offering contract renewals to JJ, Pike, Spoon (considering their age and declining talent in 06), Boki (cuz his apparent lack of talent) and Cato (unless we seriously restructure his contract). So the effects of the Bird Right will be minimal. In either case I don't see us signing any big name Free Agents.
