Why do the Rockets still have Yao? Did Morey try to trade him? Are the Rockets resigning him for next year? Thabeet makes Yao expendable.
I'd rather have a Broken Yao on the court than Thabeet right now. Not dogging Thabeet but he's got a LOT of work to do.
No major free agents this summer. Teams aren't like last year where they absolutely had to clear cap room. This year, teams are collecting assets, its a buyers market. Yao's contract is great because of the insurance, but if I'm the clips or gs I'd rather have the talent I have on the bench than a Yao sitting in the wings doing nothing for me. Yao and Oden were hard sells this season. If this happened last season, it would have been a whole other story....
Trading Yao for immediate help would have made sense if we were close to being a contender (something like trading for Kirilenko). As we went into full rebuilding mode, it did not make sense to trade Yao, because the stars with comparable contracts you would want are not available, and those like Baron Davis you could have gotten, you do not want. Oh, and BetterThanEver, love your posts, but Thabeet does not make anyone expendable, unfortunately...you should have extremely low expectations, otherwise you will be very mad this season and next.
Yao was never getting traded - it was all public relations BS on the part of the organization. I just never bought into the idea that Uncle Les would trade away his cash cow that gives his organization exposure in the Chinese market (read $$$). Remember, it's all about the benjamins.
Rockets can't sign a max free agent, even though Yao's contract is covered by insurance. His salary still uses up the cap space. Rockets have to get rid of Yao to get the cap space to sign free agents. The Rockets are not even on the radar of future free agents. If the Rockets offer him another max contract under the new CBA, I guarantee that he will come down with another injury that causes him to have surgery or miss a large part of the seson.
What? You mean to tell me that the idea of watching a guy wear Rockets red whose career average is 2.3 ppg and 2.8 rpg doesn't fill your heart with excitement and glee? Boy, the folks around here are really picky!
He needs work. Plain and simple. He's not ready and is a project. He could be great of he could just be a bust.
There is no way they will offer him another max contract. He is a free agent after this season, his salary will not use up any cap space then. Maybe we will bring him back for little money, if he wants to attempt a comeback.
What are you going on about? He's not going to get a max deal, he'll get MLE if anything. Even after resigning him and Chuck Hayes, the Rockets will have plenty of money for a max guy in two years.
My guess is that we would have only traded Yao in a deal for a star/superstar player. It would make no sense to do it for a player who wouldnt immediately make the rotation at the least.
There is no way they will offer him another max contract. He is a free agent after this season, his salary will not use up any cap space then. Maybe we will bring him back for little money, if he wants to attempt a comeback.
Oh if only Bimathug was the GM and we could have traded Yao for nothing. No, seriously, that would have been better. I would have thought Sacramento would concede to accepting Yao's contract to get over the league minimum payroll without having to actually pay out more money (they'd just cover 20% of his remaining salary which could be more than offset by $3m from the Rockets). It seems like a money-saving device for them that could also yield them a pick or something for their trouble and not lose anything at all. Then the Rockets could carry around a giant trade exemption for the next year. Alas...
Free agents like Yao Ming continue to count against the cap, unless the Rockets renounces their rights. There will be a cap hold of 150% of his max salary. Under the new CBA, the cap hold could be lower. http://members.cox.net/lmcoon/salarycap.htm#Q31 If the Rockets plan on renouncing Yao and signing him to a MLE contract of $30-40 million for 5 years, then they could have traded him to another team to get under the luxury tax and pick up an asset and still resign him.
