Hollinger wrote the following yesterday: [rquoter] Signing Ariza (or keeping Artest, for that matter) does come with two major downsides for Houston. First, it puts them into the luxury tax for this season, though they are close enough to the line that they an likely wriggle out of it by the trade deadline by paying somebody to take Brian Cook off their hands or another deal of that ilk. Second, it cuts into their cap hoard for 2010. Houston projected to have enough money to sign a player to maximum contract next summer; now, depending on next year's cap number, the Rockets would probably have to cut Chuck Hayes and renounce Kyle Lowry to get far enough under to make a run at native Texan Chris Bosh or some of the other plum free agents out there. [/rquoter] Does someone know the exact figures, and how likely it is we'll be able to offer max next year? Would we have to let Scola go too, or do we keep him with our MLE? And how does this constrain what we can do with McGrady's expiring contract? If we are serious about making a run at Chris Bosh, and we can't pull off a trade before next summer, I would guess that we can't trade McGrady anywhere else for more contracts.
Well, yeah. We can't trade McGrady because our having money to spend is predicated on his contract expiring. According to hoopshype, we have $29 million on the books for 2010. This includes Yao taking his player option And James White's contract which I think may be non guaranteed. But that number doesn't include our player options on Brooks, Hayes, or Dorsey or a qualifying offer on Lowry. It also doesn't include Ariza or any of the rookies we drafted this year. And of course it doesn't include Scola. So add to the $29 million $2 million for AB plus $6+ million for Ariza plus rooke contracts from this year and you have at least $38+ million before resigning Scola. If the cap is somewhere in the area of $60 million, then you have roughly $22 million left for Scola + marquis free agent. The cap was under $60 million this year and I think is expected to go down. So the real number may be less than that. I've always wondered, since teams are allowed to exceed the cap to sign their own players, if it would be possible to sign a free agent first to a max deal and then sign Scola afterwars, exceeding the cap in the process. It seems that if you sign then in a certain order (free agent, then Scola), you should be able to get away with that. But nobody ever talks about that and when they talk about cap space, it's always the amount left over after we've resigned our own free agents. Maybe there's a rule that prevents teams from doing this. Even if there isn't, you're risking letting Scola go by going after the big fish. You could sign a free agent and Scola could take someone elses offer because you didn't sign him to an extension when you had the chance. Of course, if our target is Bosh then that kind of makes Scola (sadly) expendable. Anyway, nobody can give exact figures. The hoopshype numbers may not be completely accurate but they're proabably not significantly off either. And nobody knows what the salary cap is going to be next offseason.
shane = 6.5 brooks = 2 dorsey = 1 landry = 3 ariza = 6 yao = 17 2 rookies = 2 total = 36 from a 60 mill cap thats 24 mil under. the problem is scola and lowry have cap holds that combine to equal 12. that only leaves 12 mil and a max contract i think is about 15? signing lowry to less than his cap hold will clear up some space. if he's signed to let's say 3 mil, you have 3 mil cleared from the 6 mil cap hold. giving you 15 mil in cap space. of course we would have to renounce everyone else not mentioned in this post.
A "cap hold" is the amount that a free agent (either restricted or unrestricted) counts against a team's salary cap until he is either signed (by his current team or another team) or his rights are renounced. Larry Coon's FAQ does a great job of explaining what happens in each case. You can see how Luis Scola will count 200% against the cap and how Kyle Lowry will count 300% against the cap (both based on 2009-10 salaries) in the chart in the link below: http://members.cox.net/lmcoon/salarycap.htm#Q30
There is one way we could offer Bosh more - via sign and trade with McGrady. The way FA works is you can't sign a player not already on your roster for more than the money you have under the salary cap(there are exceptions like the MLE). However, you can resign your OWN players to more money even if it puts you over the cap. For instance, in theory we could have signed Ariza with the MLE and offered Artest the same amount of money as the MLE and that would have been permissable because he is(was) a Rocket....of course you still pay the luxury tax so it's expensive, but if you are willing to go into the luxury tax you could technically sign every player on your roster to a max contract. If as Hollinger suggests we wouldn't have enough money to sign Bosh outright in 2010, we could offer Bosh more money by having Toronto resign him to a long term deal and trade him for Tmac(as long as the contracts match within 125%). That means we could trade Bosh for Tmac straight up and Bosh could be "signed" via Toronto for as much as 25 million a year. Then in the summer of 2010 we could resign our own players for as much as we wanted if we wanted to keep Lowry, Scola, etc. It would put us in luxury tax hell though so I don't know if Les thinks half healthy Yao+Bosh are worth all that with the lack of a star quality guard unless the plan is to unload Yao after acquiring Bosh. Two things would have to happen for this - Bosh would have to tell Toronto he wouldn't sign with them in 2010 or Toronto would have to say we aren't willing to pay you what you want and Toronto would sign and trade more to be a nice guy(maybe Houston throws in a future draft pick for their troubles). The other thing is in order for this to happen, they would have to make the deal before this year's trade deadline. If we can't get it done before then, we are stuck with Tmac's contract until free agency next year and then it's a bidding war with every other team with more cap space.
John or Lance on 1560 was saying that the dirty little secret of the NBA was that not all of that money is guaranteed. So would money not paid out count against cap space, and how do you know what amount of a players salary is guaranteed?
Yeah, I don't see the Raptors doing that when they have very little to gain from it. Maybe, if they want to free up a lot of money, we can take on one of their bad contracts -- does Marcus Banks making 4+ million each of the next two seasons count? If they really like Lowry, maybe we could trade McGrady+Lowry for Bosh+Banks. Seems like a long shot, though.
Can't afford to lose all these pieces and play the FA game. Have got to acquire Bosh (we'd acquire his bird rights?) or Amare via trade this season utilizing McGrady's contract.
It will take a LOT more than that. Toronto would want at least Brooks and 2 first rounders (2010, 2012) thrown in with McGrady's contract in exchange for Bosh, Marcus Banks and possibly Kris Humphries (who I actually wouldn't mind taking).
No one knows the exact figures because it is based on a percentage of the cap. And since the cap changes every year you can only give a guesstimate. My rough estimate of a 2010 Max contract for Lebron/Wade/Bosh based on a less revenues for NBA franchises and a change in cap to 57 would be a starting Max contract for players like Lebron/Wade/Bosh of 17 million. Now that means we need to be 17 million under the Salary Cap (Not to be Confused with the luxury tax). So if the salary cap is 57 million then we would need to have 17 million under 57 mil or 40 million in guaranteed contracts or less to be able to sign a Lebron/Wade/Bosh type player. Our projected team salary total with all team options and players being accepted and including Arriza and 2 new rookies at a mil each would be Yao Ming............. 17.5 Shane Battier....... 7.5 Trevor Arriza......... 7.0 Luis Scola............ 6.0 (assuming he will sign for around MLE money) Carl Landry.......... 3.0 Kyle Lowry.......... 3.0 Chuck Hayes....... 2.3 Aaron Brooks....... 2.0 Joey Dorsey........ 1.0 James White....... 1.0 Taylor............... 1.0 Budinger............ 1.0 TOTAL- 52.3 Million (rounded off to within a few 100,000) But if we release Chuck Hayes, Dorsey, Taylor, Budinger, and Lowry that will save us 9.3 and keep us at 43 mil and we would still come up short. Now if we don't resign Scola and keep Lowry instead we could close the deal on a Bosh type player. There is one other way and that would be for Yao to agre to opt out of his contract and sign a long term deal with the Rockets for a lesser starting salary. Let's say he starts for 12 for 5 years that would put us at 47 and ifwe release Hayes and Lowry along with Budinger and Taylor we are almost in range. But of course Morey may already have something in the works like a Brooks and Battier for Rubio which would put us in the range also. Anyway you look at it is complicated but perhaps possible and probably will involve all of the above. And if your head is not already spinning just know that Morey is too smart to not already have all of these scenarios accounted for. He probably has plans to trade battier already (why else would you sign Arriza), has spoken to Yao already and he has agreed to a lesser deal and is on board for this year to allow the young guys to gain experience. Watch Summer league very closely this year much of our regular season rotation could be playing.
The only way you could risk signing Yao for a longer term deal is if it were insured and who would insure him for 5 years? (I'm still not sure who underwrites Basketball players) How early in this surgery/rehab process would The Rockets be willing to jump in and offer 5 @ $12?
If we wait it out till near the trade deadline, and Toronto gets desperate, might we be able to convince them to take that offer? If we're going to suck next year, I'd rather not give up the pick.
I honestly dont know why u guys like BOSH so much I cant imagine him trying to carry any team deep in the playoff.
I agree - the Raptors might not want to do that but if Bosh tells them he won't come back they might not have much of a choice. Trading Tmac and a future first rounder for Bosh is better than losing Bosh and having nothing to show for it. The one good thing about McGrady is he is one of the largest expiring trading chips left in the market so if anyone else would want to pull off a sing n trade deal, it would get more complicated since few have expiring max contract type players to offer meaning it would have to be a multiplayer deal - not impossible, but more complicated. If Houston looks like a lottery team by mid season I think Toronto would be wise to consider a trade with Houston for Tmac+a first rounder and Bosh - that would give them likely two first round picks in next year's stronger draft which is a respectable for a team that would have to rebuild when Bosh leaves.
..no but you couldn't imagine Gasol doing it either yet he did. It all depends on who he is playing off of. I don't think anyone thinks Bosh could be our lone star(no pun intended) but I think he is really good to pair with another star. Unless your name is Lebron(who at least had Mo Williams), there really aren't any stars out there who can do it all themselves anyway...the key is to getting multiple all star quality players. I like Bosh but I'll say this - he doesn't make a lot of sense if we are planning to keep Yao a max contract type player for the long term.
