Tilman hasn't even fulfilled his first promise to Rockets fans (to fill the lower bowls for the camera), why people keep wondering he will keep his word is beyond me.
Jerami Grant would be excellent. Maybe Russ can convince him to force a sign and trade for Gordon and a pick? Grant/Tucker/Covington defense would be crazy good.
If we can keep green and rivers that would be a coup. apparent maclemore is locked in , I know house for sure is . next year is PJ’s last under current contract ?
actually upon further thought... I can see us paying some small insignificant amount in luxury tax at some point - just so Tilly can say that he spent into the luxury tax... it'll be about how 'he's wiling to spend to lock up players who can help us...' meanwhile we've been jettisoning picks and salary matching contracts to get under since he took over...
couldn't we have paid non-repeater for the last few years and then ducked it next year? I would have rather gone all in following that 65 win season.
Yep he will never go past the tax! Have you seen the food stamp meals he is feeding the bubble peeps. They are so desperate for human food they are willing to risk contracting covid from a delivery service.
With the potential (highly likely) salary cap drop for next season , I think its almost inevitable that the Rockets (and several other teams) are in the tax. From the numbers I've seen , even in ditching EG for little to no incoming salary , they are up against the tax line. I don't think the question is if Tilman will pay the tax next year but how much tax he will pay .... with only one way to avoid that which is going away from the Harden / Westbrook tandem. There's the possibility that the league does something to ease the tax burden or not dropping the tax line in concordance with the cap drop because so many teams could be affected.
I think paying the tax is foolish most of the time but this is a different situation. The Rockets are close to winning it all, they have two Hall of Fame players still in their prime and arguably one of the 20 best players of all time.... they need to go for it. Also, a role player like the ones you listed would make a big difference to the actual performance on the court. Fans need to know though, that once the Rockets take a step back on the court, there will be some lean years and paying the tax would be foolish unless the Rockets get really good rebuilding pieces.
Dont underestimate how many more future draft picks Tilly will sacrifice to save a buck... we all know Morey can shed some payroll if desired.. and I presume PJ will be another Ariza situation... walk away for nothing to save the $... but it will certainly be a buyers market this next off season - unfortunately I believe we will be sellers rather than buyers...
I don't know why he'd agree to that with the repeater tax looming for several years. It's more likely they couldn't avoid paying it and make some moves to reposition a better trade chip for next year (Ryan Anderson situation) and hope for a non-Covid cap boost. If they do that though, it'd be digging their hole deeper because those "repositioning" moves usually rob us a future pick or end of the line rotation player.
Willing and Able are diff things! He might want to but his budget won't allow him to. I ain't eatin that..
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/te...orts-Nation-In-Depth-with-Tilman-15483845.php How big of a hit have you taken this year? Maybe, in the first six months, maybe a billion dollars. That's why it's good to have a few billion. What people don't understand about billionaires is people think because you're a billionaire, you have billions in cash. You don't. Do I have a couple a billion in equity in my Landry's Golden Nugget, do I have a couple billion in equity in the Rockets, do you have another billion in other assets and do you have a few hundred million in cash, yeah you do. You have like 500 in cash in your wallet? I could put 500 on the table tomorrow if I had to. I'll have to go round it up. The whole key is can you win a championship if you go into the luxury tax? $5M or $10M is never going to stop us from going into the luxury tax if we can get the right player that we feel like takes our odds up to 20% to win a champion. We want to be champions. It's little dollars. You win a championship, it's probably worth $30M-$50M the following year to you from sponsorships and people wanting to buy tickets and everything else. So you want to spend the money to win a championship but you don't go out and say 'Ahh I'm going to get in the luxury tax just to get in it.' Everyone will see us go into the luxury tax when we can get the right player. Covington, we would have gone into the luxury tax, we just didn't have to get into the luxury tax.
