I've been watching more overseas basketball then the playoffs and i was watching Sergio play and i was thinking we could use him right now. <iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/clkWpgGkZyU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> This was posted yesterday
I love the idea of a 3 guard rotation of Harden, Beverley, and Llull. Lin will still get his shot, but if he hasnt improved by the trade deadline, I think he gets shipped out.
Yeah we have been hoping for him to come over, doesn't seem likely he will unless there's some new news I'm missing
If he can play defense his game would compliment our current roster better than Lins. But I still want to see what Lin can bring after an off season.
Isn't this the same dude that signed a deal until 2016 and wanted to play in the Euroleague rather than jump to the NBA? CP3 would be helpful to, but fat chance either of them coming over.
i went to spain recently and asked about their basketball teams and Lull . . . not a superstar guard he is . Bevs might be way ahead of him . . .
Llull is not coming. He was given a choice of signing with the Rockets or not, and he turned down the Rockets and chose to sign a new long term multi-year deal with the Euro team last August. Llull has made his decision, that he would rather stay in Europe instead of being a small fish in a big pond in the NBA. Technically, you can maybe propose some convoluted buyout scenario to get him out of the long term contract that he JUST signed. But this would involve too many factors: 1) He has to be willing to suddenly have a change of heart less than a year after he decided to commit to Europe long term. 2) Houston has to be able to pay him above market rate; he's not coming for the minimum when he's making more than that in Europe 3) Houston has to waste of free cap space on his buy out, in addition to his take home salary. Rockets are able to fund up to 500K in buyout without touching cap. Any portion of the buyout above 500K must either come out of the player's own pocket, or be charged to the team's cap as a signing bonus spread out across the years of the contract. This signing bonus may not be more than 15% of his compensation. He currently makes more than 1M euros per year, with a 5M euro buyout (the equivalent of about $6.5M US dollars). He's on a 6yr contract with a 7th year option. This contract was just signed last August and ends in 2017/2018. The most years that can be offered a nonbird free agent is 4yrs. $6.5M minus the 500K buyout allowance still leaves a $6M buyout that must be charged to the cap over 4yrs. That's about $1.5M per year, at the maximum of 15% of his total yearly compensation. That means you'd have to pay him at least $10M per year to make the numbers work if you want to fully charge the buyout to the team cap. You can give him less than $10M per yr for 4yrs, but only if he's willing to fund some of the buyout with cash up front out of his own pocket so that it doesn't need to be charged as a signing bonus to the team cap. So, you see, he has to be willing to suddenly and inexplicably change his mind after having made his decision and committed less than a year ago to a new 6 or 7yr Euro contract. He has to be willing to relocate his family. The Rockets have to be willing to give up a lot of cap space, for both the buyout and for his yearly salary (he's not going to accept minimum). And now, on top of that, you may be asking that he has to be willing to fork out lots of money out of his own wallet up front. Doubtful to say the least. All the Sergio Llull stuff you hear is Morey blowing smoke trying to get up the trade value of Llull's draft rights, in the hopes of trading them if he can convince some team out there that there's a sliver of a chance that he might come over. Otherwise, it's just a squandered $2.5M cash that Morey paid for those rights. He's not coming. That ship has sailed last summer when he signed the new long term contract with the massive buyout (Real Madrid is not stupid, they put in the enormous $5M buyout clause to specifically prevent him from bolting to the NBA).
Actually, because of the Gilbert Arenas clause and the fact that Llull has never played in the NBA, you'd have to use a poison pill contract like Asik/Lin's. And since he's limited to 5M in his first two years, even if you max him in his last two, and average out the cap hit, he would still have to pay money out of his pocket.