Big man rotation is 3 players deep. Look at the playoffs now and its an arms race at those positions. If the Rockets want to be contenders they need two rim protectors who can play both sides of the court.
Yes, Im sure they would love to have Asik as their backup. That's a luxury the Rockets haven't had since they had both Yao & Mutumbo on their roster. However, does Asik want to be a backup again? Would he descretely ask for a trade to be a starter again? Would the Rockets want to pay him 8.3 mil a year to be their backup? Could the cap space he takes up be better suited for a big that better complements Dwight? Could you get a backup big on a bargain contract like an Ezeli for half the cost to do the same thing? The main question to ask about this though is can they play together on the court, and make the team better? That's a tall order for the coaching staff, and Asik to pull off with his limited skill set right now. Obviously, I have my doubts. Im in no way suggesting they LOOK to trade Asik instead of Robinson/White & whatever.... that's not the point. Im saying that If Im an opposing NBA GM, as someone who negotiates service contracts for a living, the first thing I do is counter back with a reasonable offer for Asik given the Rockets poor bargaining position. If the Rockets are serious about getting Dwight, they at least need to listen to the offers given the large amount of questions that would be surrounding Asik/Howard once they acquire Dwight.
I don't think Asik will be a true backup. Dwight has averaged 36 minutes per game over his career. Asik averaged 30 minutes per game this year. If Dwight comes down to 34 and Asik stays at 30, and neither are off the court at the same time, then they will only play 16 minutes per game together (or 1/3rd). For that 1/3rd they are on the court together, we play inside out with high pick and roll. For the other 2/3rds we play our standard free flowing offense. It will help both our offense and defense to add this versitility.
That would absolutely be a preferable scenario. If Im Morey, this is what I am envisioning in the short term even though Im realistic about the future of potentially moving Asik. It also plays into wanting to play super uptempo as well in keeping their bigs fresh & limits injury risk. Still there are major questions about the future of Asik/Dwight just as there were questions about Dwight/Gortat's future despite how dominant they were as a tandem. If Dwight is playing well and dominating like he used to, are they really going to want to limit his minutes to the low 30's? Also, will Asik get bothered by moving to the bench? Will you force the coaches hands to limit Dwight's minutes? Just things to think about. Im not saying im wanting to trade Asik by any stretch. Just want this to be evaluated a little bit and to keep in mind the business side that is going to take place in the coming weeks when Morey is negotiating moves on draft night to set himself up to sign Dwight.
Gortat complained about his role when he played behind Dwight. He complained about his role this season with the Suns. Every year he's always complaining. Asik just plays.
This has nothing to do with my fondness for Robinson and White or the lack thereof. It's about objective facts and data. Objectively, these guys have not shown much in term of future prospect for success and there won't be much of a market for the salary of either one. Objectively, 1st round picks, especially higher first round picks with larger salaries, see their value drop quickly when they don't perform. 2nd overall pick Hasheem Thabeet was combined with a 1st round pick for half a season worth of Shane Battier after Thabeet had played 1200 or so minutes. 8th overall pick Jordan Hill was dumped as a rookie, packaged with future draft picks to get rid of $7M owed to Jared Jeffries. 12th pick Yaroslav Korolev had his 3rd year player option declined after his rookie season. I hope that some desperate team would be willing to actually give up a 2nd rounder for Robinson, but I am not holding my breath. Given how far the Rockets are from offering $20.5M to Howard, I am afraid that getting that cap room via Robinson and White is going to cost the Rockets either one of DMo or Jones or a future draft pick.
Unless you're using a salary cap exception like bird rights or MLE or something, the most that you can offer a free agent is what space you have available below the cap. It's not a matter of being wary of penalties of going over the cap by 1 or 2 million. It's that you're not legally allowed to offer him a contract that puts you over the cap without the use of salary cap exceptions. And since you don't have his bird rights, nor a giant $20M TPE, you have no available salary cap exceptions that can fit his contract other than empty cap space (I doubt he's coming for the MLE or something). You can trade for such a contract, such as a sign and trade, but you may not make such an offer directly to the free agent unless you have the available cap space. So even if you wanted to go over the cap by 1 or 2 million when offering him a contract, you're not legally allowed to.
As a matter of fact even if you had a $20M TPE, you would still need the Lakers to cooperate via sign and trade.
clink link to read full salary breakdown at Sham Sports http://www.shamsports.com/2013/06/t...tml?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter He assumes Garcia/Delfino/Brooks/Ohlbrecht/Anderson are not coming back on current deals.
Losing Anderson would really be a shame. Young, Underrated player on an incredibly cheap contract. And with Delfino and Garcia unlikely to return, he'd actually get some minutes at his natural 3 position. Gotta find the $700,000 to keep him. I see him taking a big step forward this year if given the opportunity.
He is an underrated player but he is also inconsistent player. If he gets consistency he will latch on somewhere if not we'll be able to pick him up again. My thought is players like him are available if you keep your eyes open. Not easily found but Morey has a knack for finding them and suspect he will find more this offseason. So not to worried. The toughest replacement will be Francisco Garcia and I am hopeful he will sign with the 2 million exception. So if we sign Howard we will have a lineup of Lin, Beverly Harden, Glen Rice (2nd rd pick) Parsons, Cisco Greg Smith, TJones, Dmo Howard, Asik, Kid from Turkey That's a 12 man roster , that's pretty good. And we can always pick another vet like Matt Barnes for the minimum and maybe we get another 2nd pick this draft for Trob so that pretty much fills the roster. I think we can win a championship with that team.
I too think that's a championship team. All good points except for the Barnes comment. Can't stand the guy. Think he's trash.
lol at that lineup its an epic fail at the 4,we got obliterated at that spot and have not improved one bit with Howard. Cant believe anyone would really play GSmith as the PF starter, we need a JSmith but more of a LBJ or KD to become contenders, not drama queen Dwight. Think about it, Dwight was num 1 in FTA and Harden was like 2, is the gamme going to be purely FTs all game?someones game is going to suffer and im thinking Dwight then he complains, Rockets start losing and people here start saying it was the biggest waste of money .
Remember, Anderson currently has two years left on his contract at the league minimum salary, both years non-guaranteed. As long as Anderson clears waivers and then doesn't get any better offers, the Rockets can always re-sign Anderson later this summer to the EXACT same deal via the Minimum Player Salary Exception! Heck, I'd imagine the Rockets would even be willing to guarantee the first year's salary (if not both). OMR, I'm not convinced that roster is truly championship caliber, but it's pretty damn good. I'd like to see some of the youngest players actually prove something before anointing them as championship pieces. Fortunately, the Rockets will have both the "full" MLE and BAE to use next summer (2014) to add some significant role players. They'll have the Nontaxpayer MLE at their disposal, although I think they'll likely only use the Taxpayer MLE amount unless a very good player is willing to take a pay cut to sign in Houston. One option i wouldnt mind seeing is the Rockets adding Sergio Llull next summer for a portion of the MLE up to the Taxpayer MLE amount (i.e., what Scola got when he came over to the NBA).
Four spot is definitely still questionable on that roster, but you'd like to think one of Jones/D'Mo/Smith could make the leap to reliable starter
Can someone with cap knowledge educate me on this? The article suggests a S&t with the lakers giving them Asik + trob which would add an additional $12 million in space. But with D12 in trade that'd only leave us with $8 million in space if I'm not mistaken? ($16.5 of our own space + $12 million in clearing Asik and trob - 20.5 for d12 = $8 mill remaining space). The author asks why wouldn't we s&t for d12 with them to clear additional space, but wouldn't it make more sense to sign d12 first clearing trob to do it, and then S&t with another team with Asik in order to go over the cap? So first you'd use cap space and then the s&t to exceed the cap right?
I think you're right. Maybe only in this scenario. We cannot clear space to sign Dwight outright and are forced into a sign and trade with the Lakers. The Lakers only agree to do it if they get Asik, T-Rob is thrown in as an expiring with potential.
Yes, that was a minor error in Mark's piece about the Rockets. I highly doubt the Rockets will entertain using Asik in a S&T with the Lakers for Dwight. They'll trade away or even waive/stretch guys before moving Asik. And yes, they'd want to sign Dwight first, THEN use a S&T (if they so wish) to exceed the salary cap. But Mark was doing a comprehensive piece on all 30 NBA teams, so I'll cut him a bit of slack. He's still the man! Great work by him.
Awesome, thanks bima always the consummate teacher....much appreciated. And Fair, I agree, I think only if we absolutely had to, but as bima points out there are a number of things we could do before being forced into that situation.
