I don't believe I've had the pleasure, BimaThug..... ...but this is excellent work. I only have one question: Have you always been this smart, or did you take any performance-enhancing drugs?
Even if he did,no big FA in their right mind will come here. I do think that DM and Les are gambling on the eventual return of Yao in 2010 and the possibility of getting a good return from a McGrady trade plus a low lottery pick this year. In theory,it looks tempting,but in reality all we can hope for is a possible future 2nd round playoff position in 2010-11. The boat has sailed,Les and DM are trying to delay the inevitable. Yao's future as a professional basketball player is very clouded. No amount of overachieving is going to bail us out. Starting from scratch is the only way to go.
The Rockets would then have about $12-13M in cap room. In order to get a guy like Dirk, they'd also need to decline the options on Hayes and maybe even Landry. No. They'd also need to renounce their rights to Lowry. Or decline to pick up their team options on Hayes and/or Landry. This. Does Andro count?
I think Hayes's option will be declined. They might try to re-sign him for a lesser contract if they feel there's no market for him or Andersen beats him out this season. Renouncing McGrady, Scola, and Lowry for a star player would be like doing a S&T. It's not a complete loss and if it's the right player I think they'll give them up...
You might be right about Hayes, worzel. But if that happens, some other team will at least throw their LLE at him, and the Rockets would likely lose him. But if they think they can line up a major free agent signing, and Hayes's salary is a difference-maker, then I can see that happening. Frankly, unless it's Lebron or D-Wade, I'd rather have all of T-Mac, Scola, Lowry and Hayes than any other free agent out there. Bosh and Amare are not SO much better than Scola that it would be worth losing all four of those guys and then having to fill out the roster with scrubs.
What about the option of not getting a big name FA and letting McGrady walk next summer? McGrady will be entering his 14th season in 2010-11. Will signing him make us a contender or will it make us just good enough to miss out on a few high lottery picks over the course of his new contract? I think resigning McGrady would be delaying the inevitable. I see no reason to wait. I don't believe McGrady will put us over the top while he will possibly prevent us from getting an up-and-coming franchise player in the draft.
I don't know, really, BimaThug.... ...have you asked for Mark McGwire's opinion, yet? But, to stay on topic somewhat.... ....does the organization's choices lie primarily (in your astute opinion) in financial security/profitability, or at the most competitive team it can field year-in, and year-out? I don't want that to seem like a loaded question, but all this postulating has to have you leaning in favor of one decision (or set of decisions) over another...?
I've looked at other scenerios that might be possible, but I am not sure how realistic they are. I have been a proponet of dumping the 30 yr olds on the rockets and start the youth movement. After thinking about something,here's a idea. I think scola's value is around 6-7m for around 4 yrs. Maybe bima can help help me with this, say Bosh finishes the yr with the raptors and he really wants to come back to texas. Since the raptors have this international thing going,couldn't the rox offer scola 6m,shane 7.7m,hayes 2m,and the 1st rd pick for bosh @ 25% of 15.7m=a contract starting at 19m. Tracy reups at 4yr 40m.The following summer yao drops his salary to 10m per also. Also brooks looks to be about a 5.5m player. So now what you have is bosh 18m,tracy and yao 10m a piece, trevor and brooks 5.5m apiece,landry 3m, budd and taylor at 800k apiece,2.4 for anderson, and lowry is traded. That's 57m to 8 players. Use the mle and lle to fill the roster out and stay under the probably 65m lux tax. Its going be something bosh kinda forces though. He would give the rockets a true young star to keep grrowing with brooks and ariza. Tracy and Yao will still be good players.
That's a very good question to ask, however i think that the Rockets have 3 options, not 2. 1. Financial security 2. Best possible team every season 3. Working towards a championship Option 2 and 3 are not necessarily the same thing. Rebuilding is a part of working towards a championship. It's something that The Blazers have done over the past 4 seasons, and they are getting closer. It's also a process that the Thunder are going through with great results and shows a promising future. Best possible team every season? That's kind of what we've been doing. It's somethign that can yield great results, but when disasters strike (as they always do with the Rockets since Pippen came to H-TOWN) it doens't always work.
I like this idea. The plus side is that Scola won't be going to a rebuilding team, Raptors is actually an old team with Turkoglu already over there. Scola will fit in really well with Bargnani, as Scola works in the post while Bargnani is more of a perimeter player. I think if we do this though they won't accept Hayes, we'd have to give lowry or brooks up in the deal.
That's correct. It's probably the most likely scenario,unless DM gets a deal which helps us out without hampering the future.The latter part is highly unlikely IMO. As far as getting a potential franchise type player in the draft,we would have to be in the top 4-5 lottery picks. This team is probably going to be competing for the 11-14 picks.
I think it will be hard for the Rockets to ever be in the bottom 5 records with Morey at the helm. However, that doesn't mean they can't be in the top 3 picks. Those picks are all luck, and we have had some good bounces of the ping pong balls over the years. I say if we can't get good value for McGrady in a trade, we just let his contract expire and live in mediocrity for a couple of years. I wouldn't be opposed to doing the same thing with Yao. Then we will have a strong core of role players and hopefully get lucky in the draft. In a league of star players, it is hard to win it all without one. Morey would change everything if he would win it all with a bunch of above average to borderline all-star players though. That would be fun to watch.
Remind you of the championship Pistons of this decade? They didn't have a free flowing offense like the Princeton, but they were a champs on the premise that they were borderline or low level allstars playing as a team. That's something the rocket could achieve if Morey plays his cards right.
I agree with you,however if we can get real value for some of our role players,DM should explore it. I like Luis, but giving him 6-7 M for 3-4 years will eat into our cap room. Shane is not likely to do well on a rebuilding squad. Getting value for him in a trade for a young player with genuine potential is a better idea.
Very nice read, but one question: didn't the Rockets use Yao's Medical Exemption on Ariza? I don't think that they used their MLE on Trevor.
Well, you know how our owner is thinking he has a championship team on the court every season, dakeem1... Again, there are basically two scenarios in play here: 1) build a team around Yao Ming (and possibly even Tracy McGrady) 2) start rebuilding the team for competitiveness i the next 3-4 years. My outlook has always been to build your team around the best possible talent you have or can acquire. None of us has a crystal ball or can see into the future. But hindsight is a great way to figure out what you have and what you don't have. And despite popular opinion, dakeem1, I don't think you win anything in this league without consistently productive players. Whether or not that translates into "star" players depends on peoples' definition of a "star" player... We've got a fairly recent example of that with the Detroit Pistons who won the title in 2004. At the time, nobody thought that that team had any stars on it. But what they had were some very talented and productive players (Chauncey Billups, Tayshaun Prince, Richard Hamilton and Rasheed Wallace were all mid-first round draft picks at least). You don't win in this league (or any other league) without talent, dakeem1. Labeling it "star" talent, to me, is like saying Haagen Daas Ice Cream is better than Blue Bell Ice Cream. After the Pistons won their title, those players I mentioned started to get the individual notoriety that comes with winning. As I've said and believe, players define themselves by the time they're done playing. And that's why, I think, the organization will give Yao another chance if he can stay healthy...and would not be entirely opposed to having McGrady back if he can regain something close to his form of 2007 (before he injured hsi shoulder and knee). The only real problem with Yao Ming and/or Tracy McGrady has been their relative inability to stay healthy together. But for the future, dakeem1, what I have come to accept is that both Yao and McGrady should not command an inordinate amount of the team's financial resources at the expense of fielding a better team. It's about profitability, first and foremost, to the organization. Winning is the responsibility of the players and coaching staff. It's not popular to think this way, I know, but McGrady and Yao both need another year of the team that's finally being assembled, and the responsibilities that are being spread around, to see some fruit being borne. I'm partial to quality individuals. Yao and McGrady are that, to me. Neither one of them is perfect. Yao is too deferential and McGrady is too moody. But the both of them have given the Rockets the best chances to win over the past few years. Loyalty isn't prevalent in this business, anymore, dakeem1. I understand that. And time waits for no man. But I want to believe that there's a little more time to wait on them than we think....
Thanks for this. I've never gotten around to asking this, but was this concept of a 'cap hold' recently instituted or were we just always oblivious to its existence? Obviously in the olden days, when we did this, we never included it in our arithmetic, but even more curiously, what's funny to me is that I have yet to see a single accredited journalist at a reputable publication take account for such an inclusion in his calculations. Its always just a straight sum game of real salaries. That should probably tell you something about the nature of that industry. On a similar note, for years, one of the greatest mysteries to me was the fact that it required the Houston Rockets to include a first round pick in the trade in addition to Glen Rice's expiring contract for John Ameechi. It wasn't until just a few months ago, while researching for my free agent thread, that I realized that the luxury tax had just been instituted that same year (or the year before.)
