Will the Rockets have cap space in 2005?

They have his Bird Rights but regardless of when McGrady is in his last contract year, he hits the cap at 150% until resigned (or renounced).

I just don't understand the fascination with cap space. In 2006, McGrady will make $17m and Yao just under $11m. You can forget cap space as long as the team is winning.

 

we won't be under cap for a near future, unless we let either Tmac or Yao walk, which is stupid.

 

We could be under the cap in 2006, if we could trade MoT(whose contract expires in 2007) for a contract that expires in 2006.

See post below titled: FA in 2006 - MoT must go.

 

Not if we re-sign McGrady and give Yao a big extension before he's an unrestricted free agent, which anybody in their right mind would do. Not to mention if we sign a point guard or back up center to three year deal or so this year. I sincerely doubt we'll be under the cap anytime in the foreseeable future.

 

actually, we would have cap space in 2006 - even if we extend Yao and TMac - because the only other contracts that don't expire in 2006 are Juwan(2008) and MoT(2007).

See the other post.

 

I don't have to "see" another post/thread to know that if McGrady exercises his POpt for 2005-06, then the Rockets have $16,901,500 committed to McGrady for 2006-07.

Further, I don't need to "see" another post/thread to know that 2006-07 is the first year of Yao's extension and the current max rate for a 5 year player coming off of rookie scale within the current CBA is (at least) $10,960,000. In case arithmatic is not your best subject, that's $27,861,500 committed to 2 players.

In addition, I know that the salary cap is based upon BRI and the fact that there is a nearly flat growth rate in TV revenue and that the Yao-LeBron-Melo $ factor has already hit, the cap is highly likely to remain where it currently is...$43.87m.

Now, we've....

* Gotten rid of Taylor & Howard for contracts expiring in 2 seasons or less. (Alan Henderson, anyone?).
* Not taken a $2m extension on Gaines for 2006-07.
* Not extended Nachbar and let him walk after 2005-06.
* Not signed anyone this summer to a MLE contract exceeding 2 years.
* Will not sign anyone next summer to an MLE contract longer than 1 season.
* Not used the TE before it's 09.30.04 expiration date for a contract lasting longer than 2 seasons.
* Not re-signed Jim Jackson to less than his $2.7m in 05-06.

After we have done all of this....based upon the current cap of $43.87m, we will have a grand total of $16m to fully populate a roster of 10-13 players without an MLE because we fell below the cap.

I suggest you rethink your fascination with cap space.

 

So how did the Spurs have capspace the season after they won the championship?

Can't we, for example, sign a near-max player for around 8M, then use the rest of the 8M on3 players, and the vet exception on one more. That's 5 more players. Then we sign up the rookies that we drafted or do they count against the cap before they are signed just like unrenounced FA's?

If they somehow rework the formula for capspace to raise it somehow, even by a few million, then I think we should be pushing hard to get rid of MoT. Otherwise, 16M for 10 players is pretty crappy. 20M and the minimum exception should be enough. If you have 3 MAX players, then depth shouldn't be that big if an issue.

The best way, I think, is to just stick with T-Mac and Yao and stay close to the cap so that we can use the Full MLE freely. In 2005 and 2006 I think we'll be close enoguh to the salary cap for Les to authorize the full use of MLE and two full MLE players are more than enough to turn our core into a top contender.

 

I'm pretty sure David Robinson's massive contract went off the books.

 

Oh yeah, good point.

Clearing capspace in 2006 should allow us to sign someone in the Boozer range and still be able to fill out the roster though, right? If I'm not mistaken, Boozer's deal starts at 7M (excluding the fact that its frontloaded).. So if we have GATER's 16M, and we spend 7M on an FA, we still have 9M + the vet exception for 9 players. If we draft a first rounder and sexond rounder, and don't sign them till later in the summer, then that number drops to 7 players and we can go over the cap to sign the rookies. Let's say we sign someone with the vet exception, the number is down to 6 players. We have 9M for 6 players? That's still a bit tight. If two of them are very basic role players, we may be able to sign them for 1.5M each, bringing us down to 6M for 4 players?

That's tough.

Is there a way we can pile up around 4 draft picks (first or second round) for that summer, and then not sign them until we've signed everyone and are over the cap? For example, we have OUR first rounder and OUR second rounder. If we add two second rounders in maybe trading Boki to a team under the cap, that would help a lot. Maybe when dealing MoT, we can land a late first or a second rounder as well?

Would this kind of thing work?

 

Sane -
I forgot about draft picks in my scenarios. The $16m is less whatever 1st round pick we sign in 2005 and less the contract value of our 2006 1st rounder. The 2006 1st rounder would count 100% of rookie scale until signed.

As far as the Spurs having cap room this is how they did it....

* David Robinson's expiring $10.5m contract.
* Steve Smith's expiring $9.9m contract.
* Tony Parker's $856k contract as a #29 pick.
* Allowing Antonio Daniel's to walk rather than re-sign him for his expiring $3.4m contract.
* Having the presence of mind to sign Bruce Bowen to an expiring $825k contract which they upped to ~$3.5m of their cap space.
* Allowing Stephen Jackson to walk rather than re-sign for his asking price which was substantially more than his expiring $587k contract.
* Only re-signing Malik Rose to MLE $.
* Paying less than $3.8 total for the expiring contracts of Mark Bryant, Danny Ferry, Amal McCaskill and Cherokee Parks.

See a trend here? Other than Duncan, they pay everyone MLE $. Rasho is their next highest contract at $6.6m. They let Turkoglu walk this summer (for Brent Barry) rather than overpay.

Now, if you think the Rockets can repeat the Spurs formula with TMac and Yao making double what Duncan does, you're welcome to your opinion. As for me, I just feel cap space is overrated and we'd have to jump through an unbelievable number of hoops and still have $4m less than the expiring contracts of David Robinson and Steve Smith. (And that $16m is less draft picks).

 

I'm with Gater on this one. Cap space is overrated.

 

Sane,

Why do you continue to insinuate that Les won't "authorize" full use of the MLE unless we lower the payroll??? Where are you basing this theory on??