Uhh, yes it is. I can tell you're delusional enough to think the writer wasn't implying anything negative throughout the entire article. The writer highlighted his many flaws and checkered history as a point to support his theory that even despite conventional wisdom with a player like that, Jackson can "fit in" anywhere due to his competitiveness and ability to sense when he's worn out his welcome -- as he's done time and time again throughout his career.
"Due to his competitiveness", and his work ethic/comradery, to go with a very high basketball IQ, and polished all-around skills on offense and defense. Meaning, he would likely fit nice as a 3rd or 4th option on a contending Rockets team...
he is under contract. he wouldn't have a say if gs traded him. he made his preferences known and houston was one of them.
I don't recall Battier making 10 million a year. More importantly Battier will probably be making significantly less than what he's making now as soon as his contract expires, unlike S-Jack who's contract goes higher the older he gets. Look every player in the NBA has good points, that's why they're in the NBA. Its all about the contract-is a player producing enough to justify their salary? I think every non-SJack homer can answer that as resounding "NO". GS itself even acknowledges they made a mistake signing that guy for that much, they want to ship him out ASAP. Why the hell would we pay SJack a huge sum of money to lauch low percentage shots and do a little bit of everything when we can use those funds to resign Scola, Landry, AB0 and just about every single player we have whose contract would expire? 10 million is more than enough to retain 2, maybe even 3 of our guys. Would you rather have S-jack over several of our core rotation guys? I don't think so
Ohhh, so now he has very high basketball IQ? Talk about going from one extreme to another. Thanks to you, in this thread alone Captain Jacko has gone from low to high to now VERY high in terms of overall basketball IQ. I'm half tempted to keep this thing going just to see where you go next! Look, if the unexpected occurs and Morey goes after a guy like Jackson I'll gladly welcome him onto the team and give him a fair shot. I understand what you're saying about him being a 3rd/4th option on a contending team -- you still don't understand that we're not going to be a contender anytime in the near future, thereby killing any logic behind the move -- but okay, we can agree that Jackson is a worthwhile "risk" in the right deal and in the right situation (much like Artest was). I PRAY that i'm wrong about us not being serious in the near future and that entertaining risky options that could potentially put us over the top, like a Stephen Jackson, become a reality. Every great team needs an x-factor. Jackson could definitely be that type of guy....well, again. Let's just make sure we get to that point first.
Oh yeah I forgot to reply to your other points. Unless its not guaranteed or covered by insurance (Dampier/Tmac) an "expiring contract" is really just trying to look at the bright side of things. Its like saying well you got dumped by the girl of your dreams, but at least you won't spend anymore money! Bottomline is that you're still gonna pay a player money that he isn't earning. An expiring gives you capspace after the contract expires, but if you hadn't signed the dude in the first place you'd have your capspace much earlier. Finally I don't know why you said Sjax has been a winner his entire career. Apart from the Spurs (which admittedly called him a hard worker and a good teammate), S-Jack's teams have been the Nets, Pacers, Hawks and GS. None of those teams are seen as winners, and S-Jax himself has a reputation as a malcontent. I said his style is not conducive to winning simply because low percentage volume scorers will never lead you to anything but a loss.
I do think he is a very savvy player. I think we just have different opinions on how close this team is to getting over the hump. The disclaimer has got to be (As usual) either Tracy, or what we could possibly land for Tracy. The frontline when healthy, Yao(Andersen)/Scola(Landry)/Battier(Ariza) is championship caliber I think. There is no doubt we have a perimeter scorer "missing". I just wonder what kind of player (PG or SG?) is on DM's mind, maybe something in a totally NEW direction? Anyways, Thanks for the fun debate.
To put it simply, I don't think you understand how the cap works. With as many expiring contracts as we have, we get penalized 2-3 million for every expiring player, over a certain number, and we are WAY over that number. Taking in Stephen Jackson would not hurt the cap as much as you think, and we could still re-sign ALL our main pieces via bird rights(Just no free-agents), even if Les does have to pay a bit of luxury tax, we could be a contender... This is what GS said about the Stephen Jackson situation... "Stephen Jackson has been a true professional since arriving here three seasons ago, and our expectations of him have not changed despite his recent comments," Riley said. "He's been one of our most consistent and productive players during that time. We expect that same display of professionalism as we begin to prepare for training camp and the start of the upcoming regular season. "As far as his remarks on playing for a championship ... that's not the first time we've heard it because that's the goal that he sets for himself and his teammates every season. That's the type of confidence that he exudes as a player and the reason that he has endeared himself to our fans. That's who Stephen Jackson is. "We have always understood his desire to contend with the NBA's best; that's an aspiration that is shared by our entire organization. We will continue in our quest to achieve that goal, and to be aggressive in pursuit of those results." I don't think they regret signing Stephen Jackson for basketball reasons, but sure, he does not fit on that "Thunder/Grizzlies esque" rebuilding team.
I am unfamiliar with the rule - edict - policy that causes the Rockets to be penalized 2 - 3 million for every expiring player over a certain number. Yes, the Rockets have a fair amount of contracts that will expire in Summer 2010. Do you have a link with more details about that NBA rule - edict - policy?
I believe you are speaking of cap holds. I don't think there is a rule that states anything about too many expiring players
There is no penalty for expiring contracts but those players do count against your salary cap until they are renounced or resigned. That's refered to as "cap hold' (as pointed out by a previous poster). Here's the amounts of cap holds for different types of free agents: http://members.cox.net/lmcoon/salarycap.htm#Q30 You don't end up paying any penalty, it's simply a mechanism to prevent teams from signing another team's free agent before they sign their own. Here's the explanation of the reason for the rule: http://members.cox.net/lmcoon/salarycap.htm#Q31
I am almost positive that I read that if you have over a certain amount of expirings, there is a tax. So are you telling me that you could trade all your players for expiring contracts and have a 100% clean slate? That does not make much sense in all honesty...
Yes, you could trade your entire team for expiring contracts. In fact the Knicks have been trying to do that very thing, Of course, it's not as easy as it sounds. Most every team has a bad contract or two. Getting someone to take those bad contracts in exchange for an expiring deal is tough. That's the reason that Eddie Curry is still in NYC. For the sake of argument, let's say that you trade all of your players for expiring deals. So at the end of the season you have no players under contract. All of those expiring deals have a cap hold, so if you want to spend your money on those players then you'll have to renounce them. Ok, let's say we did that and now you have no more cap holds and you're under the salary cap by the amount of the salary cap. The league recently warned that they expect the cap to go down for the first time. They are estimating it will be between $50.4 million and $53.6 million. Let's use the higher number $53.6 million. If that were the cap, then you'd have $53.6 million to go sign free agents to complete your roster. Let's say you are able to sign Wade and Bosch for somewhere in the neighborhood of a combined $30M. That means that you have $23M left to sign the rest of your roster. You are required to have 12 players plus at least one on the inactive for a minimum of 13 players. Now you need to go sign 11 players for a total of about $23M. Can that be done? Yes. Is it likely a team could get rid of all their expiring deals? So far nobody has been able to get there, though teams will be close for the summer of LeBron. If you were able to do it how good would your roster be with two stars and the rest near minimum players? You also wouldn't have Bird Rights on any of the 13 players that you signed for two years, so it would be tough to make roster moves for a couple of years. Anyway, that's a hypothetical. It's technically possible but it's hard to actually pull off, though the Knicks and a couple of others are certainly trying to do it this summer. Maybe you're thinking about the minimum payrole? That exists, but only in the regular season.
Bimathug is the best person for this. What knote is trying to say is unless the rockets renounce the rights to scola,tracy and others then the rockets don't have capspace. scola has a 6m cap hold for next yr and mcgrady has the 23m hold. If the cap is 55m or so and scola and tracy are using 30m and shane and yao are using another 20m, plus brooks,lowry,and landry and there you have 0 cap space.
Yes I thought I read something that BimaThug posted that went something like that, resulting in us having an amazingly low amount of cap...
I don't need <i>Bimathug</i> or anybody else to explain the Summer 2010 Cap Holds that go on the contracts that expire in Summer 2010. When I wrote my query about what <i>knote32</i> had posted, I had a browser window open to the same web site that <i>aelliott</i> cited this morning and it didn't read the same as what <i>knote32</i> had written. Here is the <i>knote32</i> quote again. This sentence in particular was a mystery for me. From my previous reads of the <i>Larry Coon NBA Salary Cap FAQ</i>, I knew that was something different since the <i>Cap Hold</i> in Summer 2010 on the expired McGrady contract is going to be much more than <b><i>2 - 3 million</i></b>. I was expecting <i>knote32</i> to cite some new rule - edict - policy since he/she was not following the <i>Larry Coon NBA Salary Cap FAQ</i> and had already taken a <b>shot</b> at an earlier poster. My expectations were that <i>knote32</i> was going to be the <i>New Sheriff in Town</i> in regards to the <i>NBA Salary Cap</i> and show <i>aelliott, NIKEstrad, Bimathug etc</i> some new things in regards to the NBA Salary Cap. So the <b><i>penalized 2 -3 million</i></b> part is wrong since it appears that <i>knote32</i> was trying to reference the <i>Larry Coon NBA FAQ</i> indirectly through <i>Bimathug</i>. <hr> For the sake of this discussion, suppose that Tracy McGrady is the only contract that the Rockets have expiring in Summer 2010 and the rest of the players on the team would continue with raises on existing contracts. Then using the <i>knote32</i> explanation of <i>Cap Holds</i>, in the worst case scenario, the McGrady contract would have a <i>Cap Hold</i> of 2 - 3 million in Summer 2010 until he is resigned or signs with another team or is renounced. 32. When do free agents stop counting against the team's cap? <i> When any one of the following three things happen: * The player signs a new contract with the same team. When this happens, the player's effect on his team's team salary is based on his new salary. * The player signs with a different team. As soon as this happens, the player becomes the new team's problem, and his salary no longer counts against his old team. * The team renounces the player. (See question number 33) </i> Using the <i>knote32</i> explanation, the <i>Cap Hold</i> could possibly be zero: and <i><b>one</b></i> expired contract is a fairly low number. Yet, I don't recall the <i>Larry Coon Salary Cap FAQ</i> mentioning a <i>minimum</i> number of expired contracts before a <i>Cap Hold</i> would be implemented. So this part: <b><i>over a certain number, and we are WAY over that number</i></b> is also likely to be wrong because it also reads different than what is written at the Larry Coon web site. <hr> Rather than learning something new from <i>knote32</i>, I have been chasing a badly mangled version of something that I have read before. I have no idea why <i>knote32</i> wrote that since he/she also has (had) some problems understanding <b><i>how the cap works</i></b>.
I could have sworn there was a max number of expirings you could have. I thought it was over 3 or 5 or something like that. So sue me dickcheese... (btw, I did not post it, but I repped aelliot for that post, I don't claim to know the in's and out's of the cap. But like I said, I could have sworn I read that there was a max number of expirings, whick kind of makes sense to me...Dickcheese)
