This is all JUWon Howard, the ray ban thiefs fault!! Juwon is meany to mike james and gets in his face during game this season, and mike james no like that, mike james ANGRY
what did the wolves give him? 4 years and trade kicker? and rox didn't move at 3 years? they should have at least tried and give him 4 years..
If you want to see something funny, go over to the realgm toronto board and look at the mike james appreciation thread. Not what you would expect it to be. Let's not overeact here, we didn't lose out on a Beltran type talent.
i never thought signing MJ would be the perfect piece to the rocket puzzle anyway. with battier in the team now, tmac can always move to SG and we just need to get a better PF.. perferrably getting rid of JH at the same time. but MJ wants to be MJ.. how can u blame him..
duhh.. He was asking for a Beltran type equivalent of a no trade clause. MJ said all three teams offered four years. The deal breaker was the trade kicker. The Rockets said no on it. Good decision by them.
The problem with the ROX management is they want to WIN (on the cheap) but they do not know the process to get to the end result. Based on their shyness away from going over the luxury tax you would think their inclination was to build a team on the cheap to add pieces here and there for a future title contender. How do you build a team on the cheap with concerns over going pass the Lux tax? The cheapest method is thru the farm system (nba draft) and that means developing youth and paying via the rookie contract system as much as you can and getting players like Swift and James to bite on a MLE. But what has occured based on this inclination is our top 8 rookie and the guy on the cheap with the MLE last year got traded for a singular cheap but less impact player than the combined 2 we started out with. Moroever because of the above move we got cornered into having to rely on getting somebody this year that with all the past dealings we had with him (bad blood) the likely outcome was he would likely not sign with us. I ask the question which direction is this club wanting to go? Do they themselves even know? If you are too cheap to go over the lux tax and get some impact players than trading the inexpensive valuable (and young) commodities to build a team on the cheap like what occured this year is even more baffling. If we are not trying to build the team on the cheap and have this "Win Now"attitude why are we so worried about the Lux tax? Spend the big bucks if you are so hungry to build a "win now" team. Does the saying you get what you pay for and you get burned on things you overspent on hold true for this team? This should be our anthem. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Losing James is no surpise, he should not be our savior. He would have been a nice addition but not that impact player everyone makes him out to be. Losing James but keeping Swift and Gay and the MLE we could spend on what ever left overs is not something to mourn over. Losing him and Gay and Swift at the same time is the real burner. This is the killer.
Not so surprised at MJ's decision. After a splendid contract year, he simply goes for the biggest and longest contract offer.
lets say someone making veterans minimum and asked for 2 years plus a trade kicker, is that a beltran-type demand? give that the rox did offer 4 years, why not try the option to opt out of his contract after three seasons as well?
according to the CBA, player and team options can only be invoked before the last year of the contract. so it is after the third season. i doubt he could get a free agent offer starting at over $6.5 million at the age of 34, so him opting out is unlikely. also, the 15% trade kicker only applies to the remainder of the contract and doesn't apply to a sign and trade if he were to opt out. so in the worst case, if he is traded ala Swift after one season, the Rockets would have to pay around $2.5 million. if he didn't opt out the last season, and the Rockets traded his expiring contract, they would pay around $900K. these were not unreasonable demands. MJ sounded like he wanted to go to Houston and would be there if CD wasn't so dense. now, the Rockets still have no starting SG or PG depth. there is no decent backup plan.
I was lukewarm on not signing him, but seeing the interview and knowing he was going to opt out after two years changes my opinion... and we KNOW that he was going to play well and bolt. CD is up the creek right now, but he did the right thing this time. Trading MJ last year was a good thing.... not necessarily for Alston (in hindsight), but a good thing none the less. The situation is pretty bad, but it has nothing to do with CD's decision not to sign MJ today. It is bad because of all the decisions that led up to this and put us in a corner. If we can't win this coming year, the Battier trade makes even less sense than it did to me before. Let's start some Battier trade threads... since he is our only tradeable assett now Wait a sec... I forgot we can't trade him before we get him.
The trade kicker is pretty close to a no trade clause. They both make it difficult to trade a player. The trade kicker in this case hurts in the pocket $$. So I don't don't know what you don't understand. The Rockets along with the Mavs initially offered a three year deal correct? They then upped their offer to a four year deal. Your suggesting that they wanted to lock him up for the full four years. This doesn't make sense when they wanted him initially for just only three. Why would they strap themselves to a full four years when they can get him for three years with an opt out clause? This reasoning doesn't make sense. Which is why I think the trade kicker was the deal breaker. Meaning that the Rockets did offer a four year deal with an opt out clause in the final year but wouldn't concede the trade kicker. **Edit** Or maybe MJ fibbed or got confused and the Rockets only offered three years.
Per Cuban, James told him he was going with the $$$ and that's what he did. http://www.wfaa.com/sharedcontent/dws/spt/basketball/mavs/stories/071206dnspomavsjames.2270abd.html
good post. I would add the following: Not only would have the 3rd year option been difficult for planning purposes, it would create a direct conflict of interest between Mike James' own pecuniary interests and the interest of the Rockets success. James would be looking to put up numbers, first and foremost. He'd be looking to get paid b/c he felt the MLE was too low. We would be looking at 2 years of frustration with him shooting too much, failing to get the ball to Yao, etc. That's not to say that he would have been bad, or ineffective. Rather, it calls into question whether James at the MLE with a conflict of interest is a better choice than say Fred Jones at the MLE or some other option (if one exists.) I don't agree that James isn't worth more than the MLE. The fact that nobody offered him more than the MLE is due to bad timing. Not enough teams were under the cap. Granted, worth is defined by what a willing buyer and seller are able to agree to at a given time and the given time wasn't good for James. But I think his performance would have been valued higher than MLE in most years.
The deal Minny offered him is more than MLE for 4 years. From players' viewpoint, it is as good as MLE for 5 years. Then the trade kicker makes it even worse. I guess the bottomline is Minny is more desperate than us. Still, I am a bit surprised that James turned out to be a completely cheap prostitute, just as everyone described him. Why did him say money was not the issue then? Why didn't him just admit he is a CHEAP PROSTITUTE? And he is a ****ing stupid cheap prostitute.
LawDawg, You mention wanting someone that WANTS to play for the Rockets. That would be Stromile, who said at the time, he was taking less money to play for his all time favorite team. He may have low energy and fuzzy understanding at times, but at least he wanted to be here. If the Rockets had to overpay Mike James to compensate for trading him away, I could be allright with that. But with his huge ego wanting to have it all go his way at his age makes it tough not to at least see what Dallas and Houston saw--this was not a good deal. We needed him alot more than Dallas though, and it is dissappointing that he led us on while many other free agents got signed up. I suppose I agree with one of the posters that said if TMAC and YAO aren't fully healthy then none of this matters anyway, but they do need more support and depth than we have now. I still can't believe people were wanting to stick with Richie Frahm. We have a pathetic bench, Rick Brunson? He's been in the league so long he must have pictures of David Stern with a yak. I hope you are right Doc that CD has something big up his sleeve. It would serve James azz right if we pulled off a blockbuster for KG!
the trade kicker is nothing like a no trade clause. a no trade clause makes it impossible to trade a player. a team's only option if they want to get rid of such a player is not to play him and waive him or buy him out. a trade kicker is only expensive toward the beginning of a large and/or long contract. MJ's contract was neither. the kicker was literally between $900k and roughly $2.5 million. in the former case, it's literally 15% of the year's salary so it is within the 115% salary rule when making trades. hardly difficult to trade. and why would the Rockets sign a guy with the intention of trading him early in the contract?
