Rockets luxury tax watch 2019: What we are doing and why it matters

FIFY

 

Star chasing, cap space and avoiding tax money have run the Rockets for years. Great stuff...

 

Ennis and House (who will now sit out to save Tman money) were rotation players. Keep defending the penny-pinching though.

 

So we avoid the tax this year and can therefore spend more next year. Got it.

But HOW do we spend more next year? We won’t have filler contracts unless you count Gordon, who isn’t filler. We won’t have cap room. MLE is limited.

So what’s the path to suddenly opening up the spigots and making big improvements next year?

 

man we are done, forget this year, we are not beating Toronto, Philly or Milwaukee even if we beat the warriors.....

 

Would you rather have Ennis and House or Shumpert and Faried?

 

This is where I eject from this conversation. I don't think you're paying attention.

 

just like being hardcapped last year, ownership will have a built-in excuse for not being able to spend anymore. it's genius

 

We had all 4 of those players on the team literally an hour ago.

 

I'm glad Tilman played his hand in Year 1. We didn't have to waste any time speculating where his priorities are or whether our expectations should be managed.

We know what he's about, we know what the Rockets are in store for, and we can all just accept the situation.

I'll gladly eat crow if we use MLE money to go back into the tax to improve the team, but after today, that is unlikely to say the least.

 

There isn't one. We are stuck with a 1-2 punch of Harden-CP3 until we trade one of them or CP3's contract expires. This is why some call into question the logic of "we had to re-sign CP3!"

We save money this year because we have to save money one of the next 3 years to avoid the repeater tax*. We choose to save this year rather than over the next 2 years because:

1) Harden's super-max kicks in next year so getting under the luxury tax will be even harder going forward.
2) GSW is the superest of all super teams. We won't beat them; and it wouldn't be close. So we hope they break up next year.

*Punitive tax for being in luxury tax for 3 consecutive years

 

He did say one rotation player , did you miss that?

 

That was a non-answer....I'll rephrase...

Would you rather have Faried and Shumpart getting the majority of the rotation minutes or House and Ennis getting those minutes?

Ennis's time would have been cut tremendously with Shumpart now on the team. As far as I know, House hasn't been traded so he is as much on the team right now as he was yesterday.

 

If the Rockets can stay under the luxury tax threshold, that also means the Rockets will have the $9 full MLE rather than the $5 tax-payer MLE this off season right? That could be a big factor in trying to retain Rivers and Faried.

 

So if we did not sign Cris how would you have seen us upgrading this roster?

What exactly did we miss out on because of Paul?

 

Next you will see this outside all of the TC entrances. They have to be filled in order to be competitive in the buyout market. OPEN THOSE WALLETS.

 

Nothing, really. The Rockets were always going to bring him back.

You can make the argument that they missed out on future ability to re-tool the roster around Harden, but given that was never going to be a realistic option, I don't really tend to focus on that.

The problem is bringing Paul back, and then not committing to building the best team you can around him. He's only getting older. "Position ourselves for next year" is probably foolish because Paul is only declining at this point. Like...not using the MLE is going to be an inexcusable decision, but it appears that is what they are prepared to do.

 

Excellent post OP.

As Sam Hinkie would say, taking the long view approach in sports is a difficult proposition for most fanbases.

That's why Morey and Tilman are getting trashed on this board non-stop by reactionaries who call Morey and Tilman "cheap" after they just gave Paul $160 million and Capela $90 million contracts respectively over the summer.

What Morey and Tilman refused to do is make bad financial decisions that would handicap both the basketball team and franchise as a business over the next 4 years.

 

I've addressed this before but it's impossible to say exactly how every move for the 4 years following last summer would have played out had we not locked up that percentage of our cap. So unfortunately I cannot lay out what happened in an alternate universe.

What we can say for sure is that we're paying 35-40% of our cap to a guy who plays 50 games a season and can't be counted on for heavy minutes in the playoffs. We also know that very old players with a history of nagging injuries don't tend to suddenly stop getting injured as they reach the end of their career (unless their minutes are steeply declined).

Can you win a title with that guy being your #2? I don't think so. Many others might disagree and that's cool. I just personally don't think the above description isn't that of a Robin on a championship-winning team.

 

Someone please update the calculations each time Clint goes to the line and let us know whether to root for a make or a miss.

 

This explains it right here. If they get under the luxury tax this year, they can spend over it for the 3 years they currently have Harden/Paul/Capela on the books where they are eating up most of the cap.

Yes, this does possibly make it difficult to sign some players around them next year, but it allows the team flexibility for Harden's next 3 seasons without having to actively avoid the luxury tax.

Plus this year, is anyone really beating the Warriors in this year's playoffs? And if KD actually leaves and with Cousins leaiving, that means there is glimmer of hope for the next 3 seasons of reaching the end goal, a Title.