Rockets and Luxury Tax - How to Avoid; Worth Paying?

Does cook have a buyout or is it just a provision that guys in their last year can take a settlement for half? Maybe that's what happens to cook,barry, and white?

 

The only exception is if they find a trade involving Cook, but that would mean that they'd be willing to pay the tax for that guy. Rather unlikely scenario. Who can they possibly get back for Cook that's worth paying the tax for?

 

Yeah, I kinda thought that. Its funny how Dallas somehow changed the game with all those partially guaranteed deals that can be easily moved. People on this board laugh at cuban and his fantasy league mentality, but when they get into a deal, they normally close the deal by hook or crook. I mean they signed van horn to include in a trade to get kidd and later resigned diop and then traded him. They make a lot of moves for better or worse, but they close deals. I wonder if the rockets could use someone like deke to included in a deal to get a player.

As far as cook goes, I think he is a situational player. Cooks problem is staying in shape when he's not playing. People don't think about it, but its harder than people think. I remember gaining 5 lbs one yr in college when I was hurt and not playing as much. The treamill and stationary bike can only do so much, its not like playing regular hoops.Even a guy like hayes got heavy when his minutes went down and he's a disciplined guy. I want to see what morey does with the deaweight like barry and cook.

 

Check out 82games.com for the +/- stats on Jordan. Even on a bad team, he was among the worst on the squad in terms of that number. The defense was worse with him on the floor, the offense was poorer. Opposing bigs lit him up like a Christmas tree. In every game that Jordan played at least half the game (24 minutes), the Clips were winless... 0 - 12. And why would you want him on an Adelman team that looks for shooting and high post play from its center, since he can't shoot outside 5 feet, has a weak post game, and can't hit a free throw to save his life?

Even if you accept the idea that Battier and Ariza are superfluous, you still can get better value for an asset than this guy, who probably will be gone from the league in 3 or 4 years.

 

A players +/- has as much to do with who else he's playing with and how good the team is as anything. Have you checked shanes +/- during both Utah series? Its terrible. Let me give you s scenerio.

In the lakers/rockets series, there were a bunch of blowouts. A bench guy for either team during the blowout could have a higher +/- than most starters. Say the rockets are up by 20 and its 2 mins left and coach empties the bench. Barry and other come in the game and the final score the rox win by 26. A guy like barry can get 3 of those in a series or maybe even more and have 0 impact on the game. I'm not going to say +/- is useless, but you probably can find good players on crappy teams that have a much lower +/- than a role guy on a winning team. By that same 82 game sample, Wafer had the 2nd highest +/- of any rocket behind Yao. So why didn't the rockets pay up for a guy with the 2nd highest +/-?

I never said Jordan was the 2nd coming, i'm just saying that he's better than any big we got right now. Cassell you know as well as anyone its about team defense also. Yeah I remember bynum dropping 40 on him, I also remember al thornton and john salmons killing shane too. This is the nba and every guy gets paid.

 

Well your memory might be faulty... Thornton got 18 a game last year against the Rox, just above his 17 ppg against the league. Salmons averages 13 a game against us, well under his 18 ppg overall. I thought maybe you'd remembered last season or the one before, so I looked at those too. He averaged 7 ppg against us in each of those seasons.

 

Actually, Wafer had the 2nd best adjusted plus/minus behind Yao. His non-adjusted plus/minus was like 5th or 6th, but when you figure in the plus/minus numbers of the other players who were on the court with Wafer , then Wafer moves up to 2nd.

 

If the stats on this website are accurate:
http://www.storytellerscontracts.info/resources/09-10salaries.htm

We now have a $73,273,949 team salary, minus James White's non-guaranteed $825,497 and plus Chase Budinger's salary which mostly would be similar to Taylor's, we are about 3.45 millions above the LT threshold.

Brian Cook (who has a 3.5 millions expiring contract), a future 2nd round pick and some cash considerations to our long time business partner Memphis Grizzlies will get the job done.

By the way, awesome analysis Bima. It's nice to have someone like you this knowledgeable around here. These salary cap stuffs are important. You don't need to be an expert, but a simple speedread of Larry Coon's Q&A about the salary cap makes it much easier to understand why and how teams do trades and signs free agents.

It surprises me that so many people on this board actually think we have a shot at LBJ, D-Wade in 2010. We wouldn't be able to offer the maximum salary even with the current salary cap which almost certainly will be reduced next year to a 7-year NBA veteran (LBJ and D-Wade in this case).