but Anderson has the disc injury which means taking him on his probably a greater risk. I'd be ok with either Ilyasova or Anderson, we'd have our stretch-4 and then shore up the bench and resign Parsons. We'd still have a formidable team and a true 4 to stretch the court for Dwight. Then sign Birdman for backup C and a wing defender and we're vastly improved.
All focus should be on Love. The Illysova guy and Dwight's former teammate Andersen are not bangers to that can really go for the rebound, solid defense, but just shoot 3s...
I do not know how reliable, but it appears Miami is heating (no pun intended) their pursuit of Luol Deng according to realgm.com. The site also stated that Houston was pursuing Ariza. If this is true are we luring Ariza to replace Parsons or will Ariza be our stretch four?
I'd rather have Parsons than Ariza. We can still get a stretch 4 (Anderson?), sign Parsons, and add some bench depth. The few million we save on Ariza over parsons might not be worth it IMO (depending on the actual amount). Lets just return the 54 win team from last year and bring in some bench help and try to pull off a trade later in the year. Please don't grasp for Ariza unless its a bench/6th man option!!
I think we should sign Ariza and make an offer to Greg Monroe or Eric Bledsoe. I love Parsons but there is now way if I am the Rockets that I am paying him $15M/YR. That is way too much and it would hurt our cap space for the next couple of years and we wouldn't be able to go after guys like KD or K-Love.
Ariza is not as good as Parsons. If we let Parsons walk, we better have Ariza AND another quality free agent lined up.
Phx will match Bledsoe and who knows with Monroe. Too risky to let Parsons go and not have any assurances of who else we can get. Plus, all indications are that the salary cap will go up in the next year or 2 so the 15 m is much more palatable.
THIS! I'm a Morey fan too. He's made more good and great moves than bad moves, but it was easy to predict that letting Parsons out of a $1M deal was going to backfire. There were plenty of teams with cap space willing to overpay for a very good (but not great) 25-year old player like Parsons. Opposing GMs know how to 'poison' those deals for Morey to match - trade kickers & player option years. This was an avoidable situation, and his biggest screw up since cutting bait with Dragic over a 2015-16 player option year and signing Lin instead (for more money). Kudos to Morey for all of the great moves that led up to Harden and Howard. However, had Morey not made these two blunders at point guard and this offseason, we'd have both Parsons and Dragic in our starting lineup and still be well under the cap to make other moves to strengthen the bench.
