With Lower Estimated Cap, Rockets Probably Can't Offer Max

Man this is bull****. I feel like all the other teams in the league for some reason like the Cavs or something have soo much money later to sign big names and we for some odd reason cannot even when we supposely get all that money from Yao.

Its better to start rebuilding because there is no point of trying to keep building around Yao. I think Yao might as well retired because I think he is holding this organization back. This upcoming season, we will probably be the least talented team in the league.

Tmac is gone after this season, and i know how bad everyone wants him gone. Yao is a good guy that works hard, but he is holding back this team more than anyone else. His injuries have plague this team year after year. His vulnerbility in the paint and how every team can easily read his offense. With Rick's offense, we need to be faster on offense and I just think Yao don't fit us and plus he is just getting older, less effective and a broken foot that is not healing, I think it's time for the Rox and Yao to departed. The money that yao brings in doesnt seem to do anything for us because for some reason we never have enough money for anyone while teams like Cleveland and Boston seem to have endless amount of money.

 

We just need to accept the fact that the next couple of years are going to be ugly. Really, when you lose your two biggest stars to career threatening injuries, it's simply unrealistic to think we can bounce right back.

Also keep in mind that many of these teams adding veterans are going for broke. If they can't win a Championship, they all face some tough years with aged veterans, bad contracts, and no cap space for rebuilding. That might have made sense for us before Yao's latest injury, but it doesn't make sense now.

 

On paper, based strictly on talent, that's a hell of a trade, Bima. I just can't see us doing that big a deal with our bitter opponent. The Jazz would have to be crazy desperate to do that. Heck, the team gets hammered in that deal. It's also assuming the Battier/Portland deal, which fills our remaining holes in the lineup, something I'd love to see happen, regardless.

I can't get past hating the thought of Kirilenko as a Rocket. That would be a hell of a team, however, and the Rockets would have rebuilt in one fell swoop.

 

I don't feel the Rockets can get the Knicks unprotected pick from Jazz but if they aren't contending next season why not ruin that pick by sending McGrady to NY?

 

I don't think it is as big of a stretch as you think because:
1. They were willing to trade Boozer for Tyrus Thomas and money savings to resign Millsap.
2. They've approached the rockets for a Kirilenko-McGrady trade.
3. They are desperate. Without trading for a trade exception or an expiring that is ALSO insured, they will probably lose Millsap.
4. This trade allows them to become major FA players in 2010

The trade for Utah essentially breaks down to dumping Boozer and Kirileko's contracts + NY's pick for Tmac, Millsap and Tyrus Thomas. The big question mark is NY's pick. If there's no picks involved, I think Utah would do that trade in a heartbeat. When you add in NY's pick, then the original Utah/Portland/Chicago trade would probably be a better deal for them.

The alternative to this is the one I posted where we don't give up Lowry, Utah takes Tim instead of Tyrus but gives up their own pick instead of NY's. I think that would be a more realistic scenario when looking at it from Utah's perspective.

+ I'll probably get flamed and neg rep for this... but I kinda like Kirilenko... *hides*

 

Alright I'm going to base my numbers straight off of what hoopshype has and if they are wrong I apologize. According to them AB has a 2 mill player option not Landry and Landry is under contract for 3 mill so our cap number with Yao,Ariza, Battier,White, and Landry is 35,423,040. We don't HAVE to take the brooks option but we I'll go ahead and say its an automatic. That puts us about 37,500,000. Let's assume both Rookies get Dorsey money which will total about 1.7 MM so we are at 39,200,000. Now lets say we give up the rights to Lowry and Scola so no cap holds there. We traded Shane for an expiring so we are at about 31,900,000. That leaves us with a roster of Yao,Ariza,Landry,Brooks,Buddinger,Taylor,White. You said the roster charge for each player was 473,604 so times that by 5 and you get 2,368,020 which brings us to a cap number of 34,268,020 which leaves us with cap space of about 16.2 MM in the worst case scenario. So a Bosh max contract would be 30% of the cap which would come out to 15,120,000 which is under what we have in cap space. That leaves us very little in additional cap space to sign a rookie and fill out the other roster and I'm not well versed enough in trade exceptions and all that other stuff to explain how we could fill out our roster but I'm sure there are ways to get it done.

Basically my main point is that even taking the Brooks two million dollar option and keeping Landry at 3 mill we could still offer a max contract if thats what we really wanted to do. People like wafer don't have to be resigned if we would rather go after bosh or someone else. Also, this is in the worst case scenario with the 50.4 mill cap and if the cap ends up going down to only 54 mill it would leave us with about 3 mill more when you factor in the increase for the max contract.

 

Not that it matters but how would Cook and Barry leave the picture, by Steve Francis type selloffs?
That lineup posted would have athleticism and prospects top to bottom, with a good blend of veterans. All the guys at the end of the position depth chart would be floor running fools.

Harpring might retire before the season. Battier wouldnt do what he does on offense, but he'd do to the other attributes Harpring lends (if he stops playing). Might not fit the Utah plan but he'd fit a being a Harpring fill-in, imo...

 

If the Rockets are signing Lebron James, they will give up Shane Battier for a non-guaranteed contract. His intangibles don't make up for Lebron James's tangibles.

 

maybe Yao will opt out and sign a longer term deal with the Rockets. If Okur is getting 2 yr 21mil Yao could proly get another 4-5 year 50Mil deal. If thats the case, Yao's first year salary would be around 8Mil-9Mil, and would give us 8Mil extra cap space.

 

This might be a bit off topic, but I've read where you mention Scola and Lowry being Restricted FAs next season. You also mentioned the Rockets might have to renounce their rights for the right player. I would hate to lose those guys and I was wondering if the Rockets could negotiate extensions with Scola and Lowry this off season?

 

Not sure if Scola is gonna get a ton of money due to his age, and the economy.

David Lee, younger version of Luis with hops and ability to finish with either hand (lol), isn't gettng offers of more than $8 million or so now, so I can't imgaine Luis getting more than $6.7 mil by any stretch.

Personally, I hate the wait til 2010 Free Agency strategy. If you can get a good player, do it now. I am thinking it may be better to just have decent players and no cap room rather than no good players and a ton of cap room anyway. In the former case, you can't outright bid for a top FA, but you can talk to the guy and say we'll give you a big offer subject to a S&T.

Of course, in that scenario, you are subject to the willingness of the guy's current team being cooperative-- but I think in the current environment, they have decent incentive to do so. This is because there are, in all likelyhood, gonna be teams with cap room to steal another team's star player. That means the current team face the threat of the guy leaving them for another team-- WHETHER OR NOT the Rockets are one of the team with the cap room. It doesn't seem that being the team with cap room is as important as having teams out there with cap room in terms of giving a player and his current team the incentive to work out a S&T.

In fact, if you have a team with cap room, but is horrible and the FAs don't think you have any hope... you are likely to get nothing. As will likely use your team for leverage only (see Chicago Bulls during the Hill/McGrady free agency).

 

As much as I love the Argentine Dream on our squad ever since it was known Yao would be out long term I've advocated moving Luis...His value is sky high and by the manner Morey is handling this offseason we are playing of 2010-11 and beyond. If you can get young athletic player(S) from a contender it would be ideal! Scola is the heart and soul along with Shane but both are getting up there in age now and unless we plan to go after a big boy in the Summer of 2010, of which its looking less likely, then I say move them now!

 

That's great to hear about Scola being an RFA. I wasn't aware of that. I honestly believe that next season where Scola will be a focus of our offense he has a serious chance to put up big numbers. He could easily average 20/10 next year. Those stats will surely drive up his value.

 

Championships are won by superstars who are MAX salary players. Teams like the 2004 Pistons come around only once every 10-15 years.

Getting a Joe Johnson and some other player a like him or step-down talent-wise, would relegate us to "perrenial playoff team that may get to the WCF once" and not much more.

 

If scola is your main focus, the team is going to suck. If u just look at La in the playoff and they didn't double yao and then yao got hurt, he shot 40%. Scola, much like shane struggles big time when yao isn't on the court unless tracy is there. Back to not trading shane, I would give him away for a younger cheaper player. Denver did it with camby and camby was a better player playing a premium position and they were ok. I bring up a couple of teams or guys, Jordan from the clippers. He's very cheap at 777k, he's young, explosive and a center. They could absorb battier's contract which would give the rockets more money to play with next season plus they would have a center for this year. Dunleavy would probably love to have shane to shoe horn behind thornton at the 3. Another option would be Battier and Scola for Camby and Jordan. The rox could play Camby and Jordan together along with Ariza,Brooks, and a resigned Wafer. Plus that gives the rockets another expiring contract. Watch Jordan's prrogress and at the end of the yr, they could let camby walk and still have a starting center in jordan or a backup. Jordan,Ariza,Brooks,wafer, landry, throw in the guy you can get by renouncing tracy,camby,barry,and chuck should give the team some firepower in terms of money.

 

That isn't my max number because I gave Aaron Brooks 2 MM dollars that I didn't have to give him. If you take his 2 MM off we end up with 18.2 MM in cap space which is more than the 16.57 MM you said Bosh could make.

I''m not saying this is what we should do at all but the whole point of the first statement I made when addressing your OP was that we could gave enough cap room to sign a max player if we want to and I stick by that statement unless you can describe someway that we still couldn't sign Bosh if we didn't take the Aaron brooks option.