Works scheduled to do this summer

Naturally for the first turn here comes the annual NBA draft. Even though the Rockets are clear from a first rounder this year, some decent rookies may still get recruited by Daryl Morey thanks to his smartness and fellow scouts. With a general manager like Morey working in operation, a hign-ranked pick is not always very necessary to get some amazing rookies on the draft night. Sometimes Morey can even find some routines to purchase some picks at the only expense of some dollars, like the second rounder bought from Super Sonics in 07 with which Morey selected Carl Landry. Even though the selection of Dorsey has already been proved a mistake, another rookie we acquired on the draft night did help our team getting Ron Artest a couple days later last year. As long as the Rockets are rather strong financially in this league, Daryl Morey has no reason to reject any first rounders if they can be had for money only, but some thoughts are needed if the picks mean the losses of our chemistry. The Rockets have built awesome chemistry with their current players, which was the biggest power that drove them into the second round in the past season, so it is definitely a dumb move to lose one or two of these players to break the well-organized teamwork just for an unproven rookie. Blake Griffin and Ricky Rubio are two exceptions though.

No big move will be made by Morey on the draft night, but Morey will still have to get surrounded by cameras in quite a short break afterwards. Since carrying the Rockets team to the second round, Ron Artest has earned great credit and interest from other contending teams including our division rivals, but it's still up to Rockets whether Ron will remain in Houston next season or walk somewhere else. The rebuilding teams have no interest in Ron Artest while the contending teams have to salary space for him, surely Ron won't accept a mid-level contract which is the biggest prize that the other contenders can offer him. Only a sign&trade can bring them Ron Artest, of course the Rockets have the rights to decide whether or not to do such a business. Theoretically, re-signing Ron Artest is just an issue of money, that said, Ron will be 100% be a rocket for next several years if the Rockets want to keep him and are not reluctant to raise their payroll.

Even though Morey is not a talkative person, his intelligence will make up that deficiency pretty well and enable him to reach an agreement with Ron Artest. Apporximately Ron has already accepted the prize of his new contract which is about 10m/yr, now what is being discussed is the length of this contract, and I don't think such a minimal uncertainty will ruin the efforts they infused into the negotiation previously. Von Wafer also deserves some serious negotiation, but no way should the Rockets burn the full MLE on him.

Considering the economic recession, it's easy to predict there won't be any no-brain signs in the free agent market this year, at least no team will give a 50m/5yr contract to a player like Corey Maggette. Most of the star-level players are about to re-sign with their old teams, so the focus of this market is not located on veteran stars like Hedo and Odom but on those decent role players like Felton, McDyess, Ariza, etc... For the Rockets team, there are two scenarios to choose, one is to use the full MLE on one player who is expected to be the 6th or 7th man in rotation, or to break up the MLE on a couple players to add some depth to our squad. Eitehr way, the Rockets won't be changed a lot by signing a free agent.

And it's also bad idea to trade some gears of the central part of the team. Obviously the Rockets have patched "untradable" lables on Yao, while the rest of rosters are generally so underpaid that it's really too difficult to find some equally good players at their prizes. Barry is the most likely to get removed this summer, not far behind comes T-Mac. It's not a big deal to trade Barry to a rebuilding team as an expiring contract, like the Francis trade the Rockets made with Grizzlies in mid-season. While it really requires a number of thoughts when there comes a forbid for T-Mac. There will never be too much scrutiny, especially if some team offers long contracts for T-Mac. Trading T-Mac for some other expiring garbage contracts is actually a lateral move, and doesn't make any difference to our team. Maybe the best choice is just to let T-Mac's contract expire in Houston, then Morey will send a serious offer to Lebron or Wade with T-Mac's 23m off the book.