Not siging a free agent, but.......... Do you think the Mavs are still willing to trade Stackhouse? The only other person I can think of.
I think Landry at anything more than that would be a huge risk, with his injury history signing him too a long term expensive deal based upon roughly 1 month worth of electrifying performances is a scary thought. I think his value will be determined by the market, and I expect the Rockets to have to sit on the sidelines all off season until his agent feels he has exhausted all avenues and sign. Landry's contract situation is holding back any MLE offers.....until it is resolved. DD
What scares me more than anything is actually letting the market determine his value and probably scares Morey even more. Some team like the Spurs who will probably be looking to get younger and more athletic could take a shot at him for a large chunck of their MLE and really put the screws to the rockets as far as having to overpay.
I much as I hated to read that, Morey is just being honest. Unless we end up making a huge splash on draft day, expect the same starting roster as last year until February 2009. Tipping his hand is a bit dramatic IMO. Every other team out there that is interested in Landry knows the Rockets financial situation and that we will have to dip into our MLE in order to re-sign him. Thus, removing us from the 2008 offseason. Not to worry, we will have our official offseason 2 years from now when T-Mac comes off the books.
I never said they couldn't use both. If we use the MLE on a free agent, we can only offer Landry the LLE (about 1.7 mil). I think Landry would easily get offers above that, especially when other teams know we can't match. His value is about on par with Paul Milsap's, and you can't expect them to be signed below 2.5 million at least. Bottom line, it's either MLE target or Landry. We can't have both. That's an erroneous assumption. Morey himself said that we're at least a good player away from contending. They intend to stand pat on the free agent market because the money will be tied up in Landry; they've obviously made their choice to keep him. The hawks, for instance, won't be able to play the FA market because they've made up their mind to re-sign Josh Smith. That doesn't mean their management is satisfied with the makeup of the team, it's just that financial reality gets in the way. You cannot seriously address a talent gap if your first step is to replace Landry with Hayes. If Scola gets in just a bit of foul trouble we're right back to 05/06.
I don't see why. If we can get a much better player for the MLE we should get them. Why do we have to halt everything for Landry?
Name one free agent worth the MLE that is better than Landry. We can blow our load on a crap player and then watch the spurs scoop up Landry. How would that make you feel? They'd be getting revenge for the Scola trade and some.
you guys are missing the most important thing Morey said in the quote. We all know summer FA is next to impossible for us as we have no Cap space. Next thing is our draft, which we could move up or down, but those won't be immediate help as Morey already indicated. Next thing and most important thing he said was via Trade toward the deadline. NOW, why toward the deadline? why not trading during summer time? BECAUSE, we are trading our expiring contracts away. so look for us to move expiring contracts like Bobby Jackson and other filters. Now we need to look into players that has around the contract size of bjax and go from there. Bjax - 5.6 mil SF - 2.4 mil (if he can't come back from injury) Hayes - 1.7 mil Head - 1.2 mil These are 4 players that have somewhat value. Bjax's expiring contract would be the biggest draw and rest filters.
Chuck's contract doesn't expire at the end of next year, he has another year and a 4th year team option. But I understand your meaning. The value of the expiring contracts goes up the closer to the trade deadline that you get.
Even if we do get a good player for the MLE which is doubtful as you have correctly pointed out,it will amount to adding one and subtracting another which will end up hurting us in the frontcourt.
Scola is much better than Landry. I don't know much about what free agents are out there and what their asking for but my point was that IF there is one out there better than Landry than why should we wait for him. Basically, i think we should pay the best player, whomever that is.
Screw T-Mac and/or Yao and their respective bloated, undeserving contracts. Their trade value will never be higher than it is right now. If the Rockets have any sense then they'll realize that this duo is going nowhere because they have yet to play a single season without incurring some sort of significant health problems. That being said, I think that revolutionary changes to the lineup are required.
If you're gonna give that glass half empty speech (that's been recycled many times over in many threads), please give your possible solutions on how we replace 2 talents like them and not go backwards in our steps of building on a playoff caliber team.
I actually like what Morey is doing. I personally like this team the way it is, just needs a bit upgrade, nothing drastic. Imagine what Rockets team this would have been if Yao, Tmac, Alston n Battier were 100% healthy. Since Rockets are going to go with the core of Yao n Tmac, they need to make sure they stay healthy atleast for playoffs. Scola n Landry were great this season, so keeping them is a no brainer. IMO Battier played great last season so he is a keeper. Not too great on Alston though, but he did play well all season and we gotta appreciate that. Novak because of his shooting skills is a keeper and could improve this season n will be great off the bench. Other than the ones mentioned above(excluding Alston) anyone can be traded and upgraded. Rockets also will need to upgrade the bench a bit. Rockets really dont need big names like Artest or anyone, because it wont come cheap. So its really smart to see what Morey can get later on because there will be alot of team in desperation n will do crazy trades. With 100% healthy Yao n Tmac, n above average role players in Scola, Landry, Battier n Alston, Rockets can still go deep in the playoffs, but key word is HEALTHY!!!!
Morey is just lowering expectations. Does anybody believe for one minute that he ain't working the phones to see what he can dig up in draft day deals? Not me. Just because he makes a statement about waiting until the trade deadline doesn't necessarily mean we are gonna wait and he ain't working on something. He's just giving himself fudge factor. He's an NBA GM for crying out loud. Do you really think for one minute that if a deal is there to be made on draft day, sending out or pick and expirings for Mike Miller for instance, that Morey doesn't do that deal until the deadline? All this tells me is Morey has specific targets for vet players he is going after. All this tells me is Morey is not willing to make a trade just to make a trade and move sideways. All this tells me is Morey is looking for a key piece to put us over the top.
The GM seems to make it pretty clear that the Rockets feel they are not on par with the other contenders in the West, and they need to improve. I don't know where you're getting that they intend to "stand pat". But the luxury tax is a constraint they have to deal with (that would be an owner's decision), so any real improvement has to be done via trade. So, the question is how should the Rockets try to improve via free agency without crossing the luxury tax? Do you think they'd be better served letting Landry go and pursuing someone else? Edit: just noticed your suggestion for Pietrus instead of Landry.
If Yao was healthy along with the rest we might have made to the 2nd round IMO. I like Scola and Landry but just tweaking won't do. We just don't have the assets to add another scorer. I have said this before but I'll say it again,the likelihood of any team moving another "Pau Gasol" for expiring picks out of desperation is low. Any team with better assets can trump the Rockets around the trading deadline.
Scola is much better than Landry at this current time right now and it's not by much. But in a year or two I'd take the better athlete in Landry. Landry has way way more upside and when he played well the rockets had a hard time losing.
I'm not sure why it should be such a big deal that the Rockets wait until near the trade deadline to make a big move. I think this group has shown that they can win games in the regular season. We may be better served, in fact, retaining the same group for the first half of the season and take advantage of that continuity. Then, as better deals are made available near the trade deadline, we can make our move to really improve in preparation for the post-season.
